Starburst Magazine 018 (1980 02) (Marvel UK)

SCIENCE FANTASY IN TV CINEMA AND GRAPHICS N918 60p

BLAKE S 7

THE LINE-UP CHANGES! NEW STARS SPEAK

HARLAN ELLISON

"BOY AND HIS DOG" ON FILM!

MONSTER PICTURE GALLERY
THE FANTASTIC WORLDS OF

GEORGE PAL

TRIBUTE TO A PIONEER OF SF CINEMA

PLUS- PROJECT UFO!

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SEEPAGE^'.

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O na of tfi* biggest problems in megeiine production is actuellv seeing a film or tv show early enough to be able to feature a review in
print at the right timet Far too often, our printing schedules are so far ahead of the news stands date that most "current reviews" are
more like nostalgic commentsi That's why we’re double pleased this issue to be able to include our interviews with both new Liberator
crew members in our tvro-part feature on S\ska’%l. Sad to say. though the third season of this popular Ql

BBC series is about to reach your screens, rumour has it it will be the last. Over to you for your comments. —

THEMAKINGOFBLAKFS7 26

BBC producer David Malor>ey, the man
behind Blake's 7, talks about the origins of
the series and the directions it will take Mith
the new season.

STARBURST LETTERS 32

Readers raves and roastings. See if your
letter is among this collection.

In place of our regular Starburst SF Oassics,
we present a picture-packed photo feature
of cinematic aliens old and new. ^

Exacutive producer Sandy Howard explains
to Starburst why the movie has taken so
long to reach the cinemas.

PRQJEaUFO

We take a critical look at this sf tv
from tha United States.

ZOMBIE U

The new shocker from George (Night of
the Livirtg Dead) Romero reviewed^^
John Brosnan.

Alex Carpenter reviews some of the many sf
books currently available in the book shops.

iTHEFUnSOFIKOIKXFALSO

'From Destination Moon in 1951 to Doc
Savage in 1975, George Pal has been a major
icontributor to the worlds of cinema sf. Tise
^Vahimagi looks at a career that has spanned
over 25 vears^-^^N

THE STARS OF BUKPS 7 14

The new crew of the Liberator speak to
Ralph Scott in this tha first part of the
Blake's 7 intervievw.

THINGS TO COME

Starburst's ever-popular news column looks
ahead to the many sf offerings promised for
the coming — -*'-t ^

WORLD SF CONVENTION 40

Starburst takes a special pictorial look at
Seacon, held in Brighton in September
1979.

BOY AND HK DOG

fterlan Ellison's classic sf short story was
filmed in 1975. Starburst reviews the film,
as yet unseen in Britain.

Puuahtd monthly w UtnU Cornkt Ltd.. Jhdmln Mourn, 206-211 Konthh Toon Hood. London NWS. AH photognphk mmitrlol N copyrlshl ot SBC, NBC. ABC. CBS. ITC. IBA Oohimblo Scotio-Amoricon
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WHY THE HOLD-UP?

TONY CRAWL

THE FACTS STRAIGHT FROM EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SANDY HOWARD

S andy Howard had the best poster
in Cannes this year. And the worst
headache. A year ago, the pro-
ducer told me iust how fantastic his
Meteor movie was. it sounded a shade
better than okay. A conwt smashes
through an asteroid belt exploding a five-
mile wide meteor, and accompanying
splinten, on 72,000 mph collision course
with Earth. The splinters demolish a
whole mountain in the Austrian Alps,
chum the Pacific Ocean into a 100ft high
tidal wave and nearly destroy New York
City. To prevent an even worse catas-
trophe both Russia and America send
rockets and missiles to destroy — or at
least deflect — the big nsother of a meteor
itself . . .

"I think it's a sensational, big, vary
suspenseful film made by an outstanding
film-maker, Ronald Neame, who makes a
lot of these younger fellows — who think
they're marvellous — look like bums."
That's what Sandy Howard told nw in
May, 1978, and to the buyers queuing
outside his office for a slice of "the most
monumental film project undertaken in
Hollywood in 20 years." Deals were fast
being signed and opening dates agreed
upon right round the globe. Then, came
the delays. One darned hold-up after
another. The '78 premiere date went by
the board. The '79 dates canw unglued.
The June 15 start for America came apart
at the seams, and a new nationwide
release pattern was inaugurated for mid-
October. Japan got in first with late
September; America and most of Europe
rearranged their plans for October.
Perhaps.

A long wait for a movie, however
monumental, which Britain's Ronnie
Neame started shooting in three Holly-
wood studios on October 31, 1977 . . .

So what went wrong? Ambition, says
Sandy Howard. "There were so many
people involved who thought it should be
a bigger picture. It became Topsy,
growing and growing and growing. As a
result, we put demands upon ourselves to
make tidal waves bigger, avalatKhes
bigger, story bigger and Meteor became
. . . bigger. When you have a bigger pic-
ture — with opticals — you have bigger
problems. It's a simple equation. It's now
a very expernive film. But it looks it on
screen."

He stops. Not for long. Sandy Howard

I is one of the fastest-talking producers in
I Hollywood. He talks in identifiable sen-
1 fences, paragraphs, jokes, quotes and
I exclamation marks. His past credits
j include A Man Called Horse, The Island
I of Dr Moreau, Embryo, Circle of Iron
1 (ex-The Silent Flute). His current sche-
j dule includes City on Fire, Chris Lee's
Jaguar Lives, The Gold Train, The Power
I Barons, Death Ship, Brainstorm, some of
, which he'll discuss in later issues.

He's a showman, then, but he never

tries to snow you. "Meteor is an astoni-
shing film because it encompasses more
events and happenings than any other
film of its nature. It's not a disaster film.
It is a series of disasters ... a suspense
film in the truest sense. I think it will
work in every single country in the world.
Yes, it has become more costly. But this
is the nature of the game. It's a big busi-
ness, big pictures."

Originally, the film — and indeed what
was once the completed film - had a

4

budget of 13-nnillion dollan. Then canw
the decision to have all — or most — of
the special effects, visuals and opticals re-
shot. Ronnie Neame sent for his Poseidon
team, editor Harold Kress and production
desigrter Bill Crebe. Also joining the team
at this 11th hour were visual effects
master Bill Cruse and special effects tech-
nician Margot Artderson.

Their work was not even finished
when Sandy Howard talked exclusively to
Starburst in May, 1979. There was light
at the end of the tunnel, though, and '
Sandy could joke about it. "As we talk at
this very moment, there are twelve
Nubian slaves working on the effects until
about an hour before the picture opens. ,
But it will be finished." I

Starbunt: How's it looking?

Sandy Howard: Quite extraordinary! The
difficulty about this kind of film is that
it's always a learning process. It is one
thing for a producer to learn, because as
you know, most producers are schmucks
to begin with. But it's another thing for
the optical houses to learn — because we
give them bigger things to do that have
not been achieved or even attempted
before.

For example . . ?

Tidal waves. Now they've been done, but
most people don't realise that it's always
miniatures affected by the tidal wave —
not, as we wanted it, live action, with real
people. When you see people inundated
by a tidal wave in the old Hurricane film

(1937), it was actually an insert shot of
somebody in swirling water — it could
have been shot in a bathtub! In our case,
we have streets in Hong Kong, where this
huge tidal wave comes around the corner
and follows running people and overtakes
them ... At least, that is supposed to be
in the ntovie. And I think it will be.

How do you manage that trick?

By a rotoscopic process we're working
on, so that people will look believable as
they are mowed down by this huge wave.
For a tidal wave to conte around a corner,
make a left turn and a right turn, then go
over screaming people - that's exciting
film-makingl The things we've done with
miniatures — I say "we", it is not me; I'm
the one who worries, the other people do

mETEOR

most of the work — but our miniatures
are probably the best of their type ever
seen on the motion picture screen. They
dwarf the impact of Kubrick's 2001. He
had, basically, one huge miniature, and
that no longer star>ds up in this meticu-
lous world of today. Ours are small
miniatures in size, with extraordinary
detail, and we have new lenses that
photograph them in such a manner that

"We have lenses that photograph
miniatures in a totally new way."

has never been seen before. They're used
by Billy Cruse, of Cruse & Co. Bill has
one special lens allowing him to literally
go in and out of the miniatures.

Bin Cruse joined the party later in the
day, but he's becoming the real star, /
gather?

Bill is probably one of the most unique
and talented optical effects experts in the
business today. He's worked on a number
of pictures; The Towering Inferno and
Damnation Alley. He does things

«|

the firs

would not have taken on this
'project if it was just another
disaster film. After all, / did
first . . . After The Poseidon
Adventure, / said: No more. But
Meteor has a better reason for being
made, / think. For one thing, there are
some three-dimensional, or at least
two-dimensional characters. For
another, the question of how to deal
with the possibility that large meteo-

rites might hit the earth has been
seriously investigated by the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology. We
all know about the craters in Siberia
and Arizona, but they were caused by
rather small ones. This film deals with
a threat that could be all too real. ” —
Director Ronald Neame in the New
York Times.

differently to a lot of other people. He's
an artist, not just a mechanic. We're very
satisfied. He's turning out some visuals
that I fully believe are unequalled in
movies.

What's the best sequertce?

There are so many . . . There's some
explosions in outer space which are a

knockout. Then, we have these stunning
miniatures — two major ones. The
Russian launching platform, Peter The
Great, which launches 14 huge rockets
into outer space to stop the meteor from
coming into our atrrwsphere. Better still,
the American Hercules launch platform,
16 huge huge rockets, — ^e most
extraordinary miniature you've ever seen
in your life. It happens also to have been

"Doing it small and good is more
expensive than doing it bigger."

five months late in being delivered . . .
another great help in getting this picture
made in time.

But worth waiting for?

Oh sure. And very costly. Doing some-
thing small and good is more expensive
than doing something bigger, because of
the meticulousness of the work. Building
these rockets and platforms is like being a
watchmaker — there's literally thousands
of details on every single miniature.

Wont your actors — Sean Connery,

A scene of cemege end destruction es the first effects of the Meteor are felt.

GA122 NO MEAN CITY (by Rodney Matthews)
40"x20" Cl .95

6412 HYDROGEN BOMB:
38" *26" Cl .85

GA52ICE SCHOONER:
40" *27" Cl. 95

GA62 SPACE HIJACK:
(by Rodney Matthews)
23" *33" Cl .60

r

TOOflfT! .

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227 SODOFFI':
20" *15" 60p

GA1 17 ROBOT LINE-UP (by Jim
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GA1 16 THE BALL(X)N ATTACK (by Jim Burns)
40"x20" Cl .95

. talking (]lx« It

277 0 LORD . . .':
32"x20" 75p

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40"x27" Cl .95

28 " X 33 " 950

GA55 THE TWILIGHT
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27" X 40 " Cl .95

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505 TOMORROW
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I SAFE AND SOUND
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(•Now About t6 dtvt

mETEOR

Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Martin Lan-
dau, Brian Keith, Trevor Howard - be
buried by all this super effects armoury.
Not at all. Ronnie Neame, our director,
has been a blessing to us. He's a very res-
ponsible man, a very qualified director,
but also a great visual eye. People forget,
or don't know, that Ronnie was a cine-
matographer on films like In Which We
Serve (1942), ,j4itjjch Noel Coward

Above : Natalie Wood plays a Soviet astro-
physicist working with US scientists to destroy
the Meteor. Below. A tertse moment as the
countdown for the missile laurtch gets
under way.

co-directed with David Lean. Ronnie
went on to produce four David Lean
films, and got his stripes as a director
from his visual background. He's made
some fine, fine films — I think Tunes of
Glory (1960) was the best he ever did, a
masterpiece of its time. He's always con-
scious of his actors, strengthening their
roles so that the human element would
balance out the power of the special
effects.

Of which there are many more than
you've mentioned.

Yeah, the effects in outer space are so
varied and remarkably honest in their
appearance. We have a meteor splinter
landing in Siberia and causing a lot of
snow to melt. A meteor shower over

'The effects in outer space are
varied and rentarltably honest."

Rome — somehow the Vatican keeps the
danger away from Vatican City. Another
splinter causes the tidal wave which hits
Hong Kong with thousands of extras
being engulfed.

That should take care of their boat-
people problem. You also destroy New
York. What have you got against New
York City?

(Laugh). People keep asking nr>e that. My
answer is: New York has a lot more box-
office than Ohio! At the end of the pic-
ture, I have a certain amount of mixed
emotions. Shortly after we've killed ten-
million Jews in New York City, there is a
celebration scene. I don't know what the
reaction will be to that!

Your various distributors have all put
money Into Meteor. How did they react

\

* \

mrETEOR

to the delays?

They've all been marvellous. Warner
Brothers, who own about 75% of foreign
distribution, are still very excited about
the film. So is American-International in
the United States, Nippon Herald in
Japan, Stockholm Film in Sweden and
so on. Very important to us because
today, every country in the world has a
chance of paying very, very good returns

Above: Karl Malden is familiar to tv viewers for
his role in The Streets of San Francisco. Left:
Martin Landau plays General Barry Aldon, a
hard-nosed soldier who is opposed to sharing
any military secrets with the Russians for any
reasons at all.

to a producer. If he has an honest distri-
bution. I never worry about the Japanese,
they're the most honest people in the
world. They don't cheat. The Swedes
don't cheat. There are a few countries
where you know the odds are very much
against you, but I will never mention
Italy by name . . . Meteor is great for
distributors, more of a disaster for the
producers. I won't see my profits for four
or five years, unless it's a Star Wars which
I doubt it will be. We're delighted, though
with their backing, enthusiasm and endor-
sement. That's not just politics. We
couldn't possibly have managed it on our
own; we wouldn't be that dumb. For it
has been a terrible picture to make. It
looks more than it cost, except it cost

"Meteor looks more than it cost,
but cost more than expected."

more than we expected. From that point
of view, it's a disaster. No . . . we're only
a couple of million dollars overbudget.
And that's chickenfeed. / suppose . . .

{He winces). For a major picture, a major
distributor would get unhappy with that
figure and start to harass the producer.
But everybody would sleep at night. For
an independent production, it has caused

{he laughs) the attempted suicide by my
partner, Gabe Katzka, on a lot of
occasions. He just keeps missing! But, if
we go over five more dollars, Gabe's
gonna jump! And I told him, if he jumps
to take me with him.

(Before any such leap, Sandy Howard
returns next month - talking of his new
science-fantasy movies Odysea and
Brainstorm^ •

Above: Veteran film actor Trevor Howard is
featured in Meteor as Sir Michael Hughes, head
of Britain's Jodrell Bank observatory from
which the course of the Meteor is tracked.

Above: Brian Keith and Natalie Wood are trapped in the underground
control centre which is destroyed when a chunk of meteorite hits New
York. Below: Sean Connery stars as Dr Bradley, top US space scientist.

Above: The evacuation of the wrecked underground control centre is
supervised by Dr Bradley (Sean Connery). Below: The Soviets are /
resented by Natalie Wood and Brian Keith.

Mim OF THE DEAD

Eleven years in the making, the
sequel of George A. Romero's
Night of the Living Dead, a grisly
little sf-oriented horror offering
called Zombie: Dawn of the
Dead, is finally with us.
Starbursfi resident reviewer of
sickening cinema, the corpse-like
John Brosnan (he who reviewed
The Manitou in issue 8 and
Prophecy in issue 15) gauges just
how nauseating the film is.

Right: Director George A. Romero.

T he original title of this picture
was Dawn of the Dead and it is, of
course, a sequel to Night of the
Living Dead. George A. Romero, the
former Pittsburg tv commercial maker,
made Living Dead back in 1968 and
though he's made a number of films since
then, such as Jack's Wife, The Affair, The
Crazies and Martin, it has remained his
only real success . . . until Dawn of the
Dead.

Romero had resisted making a sequel
because he had wanted to prove that, as a
film maker, he was capable of other
things apart from walking corpses. The
Affair (originally called There's Always

I Vanilla) was a sentimental romantic
^ drama. Jack's Wife was about a housewife
I who starts meddling with the occult and
j becomes obsessed by it; The Crazies,

I however, was the nearest Romero got to a
I remake of Living Dead before Zombies,
j with its story of a small American
town hit by a man-made virus that turns
its citizens into deranged killers. Then he
returned to another small-scale, psycho-
' logical drama with Martin which con-
i cemed a young man who believes he's a
I vampire. But when none of these films
I achieved anything like the financial
success of Night of the Living Dead it was
inevitable that Romero should succumb
to the pressure to make a sequel. And
with Zombies he's done so with a
vengeance!

I It's as if Romero was saying: "Okay,

I you people out there want blood and
I gore and walking corpses galore . . . well,
j I'm going to give them to you. I'm going
to give you so much gore it's going to be
coming out your earsi" And it does. By
the end of Zombies I was protesting
weakly, "Enough, no more . . . one more
shot of a zombie being blasted to pieces
and I'm going to deposit my lunch in the

The endless scenes
of violence and
horror have a cumu-
lative effect that can
penetrate the sen-
sibilities of the most
blase of viewers.

lap of the person sitting next to me."

The endless scenes of violence and
horror have a cumulative effect that can
penetrate the sensibilities of the most
blase of viewers and leave them emo-
tionally drained. That the film manages
to do this despite the obvious cynicism
with which Romero treats both his
material and his audierKe demonstrates
his growing skill as a film maker.

The cynicism is not only evident in the
exaggerated heapings of blood and gore
but also in the heavy-handed satire and
humour that permeates the film. The
walking dead are obviously meant to
stand as a metaphor for the mindless
American masses (which presumably
includes the film's audience) and as the
setting for all the mayhem Romero has
significantly chosen a huge, ultra-modern
shopping mall — a "temple to consume-
rism" as the publicity hand-out describes
it. Surveying the hordes of zombies stag-
gering around the mall's car park one of
the four main protagonists asks: "Why do
they come here? What do they want?"
"Well," comes the reply, "this place was

very important to them when they were
alive. I guess it's instinctive." And to
press home the point there are, through-
out the film, shots of the walking dead
staring mirrdlessly at expensive goods that
I presumably they once lusted after but are
now useless to them.

Much of the humour involving the
zombies is less subtle — there are shots of
them stumbling into store window
dummies; falling into fountains, stagge-
ring up escalators and even attempting to
play ice hockey. Overall the zombies in
Dawn of the Dead are much more path-
etic than they were in Living Dead where
they were treated purely as a hostile

11

Left: Th 0
SWA T team
member,
Stephen
^David Emge^
becomes a
member of
the Living
Dead after a
zombie
attack.
Below:
Stephen's
partner, Peter
^Ken Foreey,
prepares to
defend him-
self from the
zombies.

force. In fact at times you feel quite sorry
for them, particularly in the sequence
where the shopping mall is invaded by an
army of Hell's Angels who start blasting
away at them indiscriminately, not for
reasons of survival but simply for fun.

But though on one level Zombies
works as a black comedy {very black) it
also works as a true horror film. Romero
judges his shocks and horrific set-pieces
with all the skill of a veteran, which he is
now, and there are a number of sequences
that are truly memorable. The most
horrific scene, in my opinion, occurs in
the early part of the film when we see a
gas-masked, heavily armed SWAT team
blast their way into a black apartment
where the inhabitants have been hiding
their dead imtead of turning the bodies
over to the authorities for burning as
ordered. Two rtfembers of the SWAT
team find the room where the corpses are
hidden and the sight that ofeets their
eyes, and ours, is like something straight
out of hell — a whole roomful of writhing
corpses, in various stages of decom-
position, some straining against ropes,
some struggling within their shrouds like
giant worms — others gnawing on human
arms and other unidentifiable sections of
anatomy. "You want nausea?" Romero is
saying, "Well, here it is ... "

A word about the actual amount of
violence in the film — the version I saw
did have some obvious cuts but not
enough to make much difference to the
film. Presumably these cuts were made by
the distributors themselves and it's
possible that our beloved censor will
order more cuts before the film goes out
on release in January. If he does it will be
a shanw, as well as a disgrace, because, as
I n>entioned earlier, it's the cumulative
effect of all the blood and gore that gives
the film its impact and is also necessary
for the satirical points that Romero is
trying to make. One thing is certain —
don't wait for it to turn up on tv. If ITV
ever showed it, judging by the way they
hack films about these days (hancb up all
those who are still wondering what
happened to Jack Nicholson's nose in
Chinatown?) Zombies would have a
running time of ten minutes.

Looked at on a purely technical level
Zombies, despite a relatively low budget,
is quite an achievement. Apart from the
added colour it is a much slicker pro-
dution than Night of the Living Dead
which, by comparison, was little more
than a feature-length amateur film.
Romero's decision to set the film in the
giant shopping mall was a stroke of genius
— not only does it serve as a disturbingly
incongruous setting for a nightmare,
which reinforces the nightmare element,
but its cavernous halls filled with luxury
goods automatically adds to the picture's
production values. Romero is also well
served by his four principal players —

David Emge, Ken Force, Scott Reiniger
and Gaylen Ross — v^o portray the two
SWAT members; the helicopter pilot and
his pregnant girlfriend who take refuge in
the top floor of the mall are able to
defend their luxurious sanctuary quite
effectively until, inevitably. Things Go
Wrong . . . But the real star of the movie
is Tom Savini, the make-up and special
effects man who achieves miracles. I've
never seen simulated human flesh look so
realistic before and the scenes where
people have large chunks bitten out of
their necks, arms, legs etc are enough to
turn the strongest stomach. And in this
one picture Savini must use more
exploding blood capsules than Peckinpah
has used in his entire career . . .

To sum up, with Zombies Romero has

made a successful three-pronged attack on
three major American obsessions — guns,
gore and goodies — while making a classic
horror film at the same time. In a sense
he's made the ultimate 'American' movie.
1 — Zombies (1979)

David Emge (as Stephen), Ken Forae
(Peter), Scott Reiniger (Roger), Gaylen Ross
(Frartcine).

Written and Directed by George A. Romero,
Director of Photography Michael Gomick,
Assistant Producer Donna Siegel, Assistant
Director Christina Forrest, Music by The
Goblins with Dario Arganto, Production
Manager Zilla Clinton, Sound Recordist
Tony Buba, Wardrobe jMie Caruso, Makeup
and Cosmetic Special Effects by Tom
Savini, Lightirrg Director Carl Auganstain,
Edited by George A Romero, Produced by
Richard P, Rubanstain. A Target Inter-
national Pictures Release in the UK.

Time: 118 mins Cert: X

12

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13

INTERVIEW Fmri

CREURf OF THE LIBE

lake's 7 returns for its
third season, but regular
followers are going to notice a
number of startling changes in the
show's line-up. Gone is the main star —
Gareth Thomas as Blake, and also
Jenna, played by Sally Knyvette.

Added, are two newcomen to the series,
Steven Pacey as Tarrant and Josette
Simon as Dayna.

Ralph Scott was invited along to the
BBC Studios during the taping of the
new season's fourth episode City at the
Edge of the World to talk to Blake
regulan Paul Darrow, winner of the
1978 Starburst best actor award,

Michael Keating and Jan Chappell, and
the two new members of the craw.

PAUL DARROW

During a break in the afternoon rehear-
sals I began by taking the opportunity to
speak to Paul Darrow — Kerr Avon.
Starburst: Firstly may / congratulate
you on winning the Starburst Award.
Paul Darrow: Thank you, it was a great
thrill for me to receive it!

Was Avon in Blak:'. 7 your first science
fiction role?

No, I did Dr Who many years ago, in
which I played a captain who was
cyluvionised (laughter). And of course
I'd done a lot of television and reper-
tory theatre before and after. I didn't

have an interest in science fiction at all
at that time, but I have built up a mode-
rate interest since Blake. I've read books
by Asimov and the like.

How did you first get involved in
Blake's 7?

I was asked to come and see the pro-
ducers. I didn't know anything about it
— not even that it was science fiction.
When I arrived I was told that Blake was
an engineer, so I thought it was going to
be another Plane Makers series, if you

14

remember that. Anyway they eventuahy
told me about this character and said
they thought I could play it. For a
couple of months I wait^ around, read
a few scripts and decided I liked it. They
seemed to like nne, so they gave me the
part.

And has the character developed as
you've intended? Avon appears to be
very much the rebel.

Not so much the rebel, but very much
his own man. Nobody tells him what to
do ar>d gets away with it. To quote John
Wayne — "Nobody knocks over my
glass of milk and gets away with iti"
Have you ever noticed that Avon rarely
smiles? During the filming of the first
series we had got up to episode ten
before the director took me to one side
and asked if this was deliberate. It is
deliberate — I limit Avon to one smile
per episode.

How much of Avon is Paul Darrow?

I think Avon is a lot like I would want
to be, but not as cold and ruthless. You
see you have to put him in the circum-
stances that the programme presents,
he's living in an extraordinary situation
and you've got to be an extraordinary
person to be able to cope. He's also a
genius at self-preservation and com-
pletely self-centred. I don't think I am, I
hope I'm not. I do have an affection for
him though. He does things we wish
we'd thought of doing in a certain
situation, and he's not afraid of any-
thing. He's not even afraid of death.

I have been very fortunate in that I
have been able to develop Avon as I see
him. Terry Nation created the original
outline and has been pleased with my
portrayal and development of the
character.

Let's talk about the new series, with
Blake — Gareth Thomas — gone how has
this changed it for you?

Quite a lot from the point of view of
my character. The pressure is off Avon
so to speak, in as much as although he
had a respect for Blake, there was a
great deal of feeling there, and Gareth —
who's a very good actor — and I worked
very well together. So it's changed quite
a lot in that the Liberator is now Avon's
and the relationships are changing all
the time, with the new people who
come in. The format is slightly different
— rrat greatly, but one is not up against
the Federation all the time, one is up
against other forces . . . against other
baddies, or maybe other goodies,
remember — Blake's 7 are criminalsl
Do you think people will accept the
new series without Biake?

Yes, I think so. Blake is still mentioned
and his influence is still there, and we
are still Blake's 7. For example, the
Queen's Hussars are still the Queen's
Hussars even when the Queen isn't
there.

Without revealirtg too many secrets, can

you say how the two new characters,
Tarrant and Dayna, come into the
series?

It starts off following the battle that
had begun at the end of the last series.
That battle is now over and we're in a
bit of trouble with the Liberator, and I
hope I don't give too much away when I
say we have to abandon it for a short
period of time while it repairs itself. We
get separated and I land upon a par-
ticular planet and get rescued by a girl
whp looks after me when I'm being
attacked by natives. This is Dayna.

When we eventually get back to the ship
we meet Tarrant but there is a very
good twist to this that I would rather
not give away.

iMIl we be seeing more relationships
between the crew in this series?

Yes we will. There hasn't been any form
of shall we say sexual relationships in
the past. You're now getting a little of
that creeping in. The relationships that
developed between the crew basically
remain the same. But there are other
characters who come in from episode to
episode and indeed in this story we are
doing now, Vila falls in love, which is all
rather charming. Avon wouldn't
approve but still . . .

Later on I have a relationship of a
kind. I don't know with whom yet, I
haven't seen the scripti
It's nice to see this kind of develop-
ment.

Yes it is. I don't think the powers-that-
be thought it would be as successful as
it has been, or as popular, or would have
created as much interest as it has.

People who are interested in Blake's 7
let ^e BBC know about it. I 've had
thousands of letters.

What difference, if any, does that make
in the production of the series?

The BBC standard is obviously very
There is a lack of money every-

Opposiw: The new crew of the
Liberator. Left to right: Jan
Chappell fas Cally/, Steven Pacey
fT arrant), Paul Darrow (tKvon),
Michael Keating Ni\a) and
Josette Simon IDaynaJ. Above: A
bearded Avon! Below: Dayna
shows that she is as capable as any
of the Liberator crew members.

where, and particularly in an organi-
sation like this. This is an expensive
show to do. and to do it really well as,
say. Star Trek it would have to go on to
film. Well if you suddenly did that, you
would be spending a lot of money and a
lot of time and the BBC, or I doubt any
other company, could do it, so within
finances I think they do very well.
Would you like to see a feature film
made of it?

Yes I would, I think it would be a really
good thing.

Do you think Blake's 7 would have a
good market in America where even
now Dr Who has taken off in a big way?
I don't see why it shouldn't, we would
certainly like it to anyway, the wider
audience we can reach the better.

Do you think that Blake's 7 will go on
to further series even without Blake?

It's possible, depending on popularity of
this next series which could be the best
yeti Getting away from the Federation
gives us much nrxjre scope and more
baddies to come up against.

Would you give any message to Blake's
7 followers watching this new season.
Enjoy!

! JANCHAPPEU

As Paul was called away to rehearse
another scene, I was joined by actress
Jan Chappell who plays Cally, and Jan
began telling me how she becante a
member of Blake's 7.

Jan Chappell : David Maloney, the
producer of Blake's 7, saw me in a play
at the Royal Court Theatre in London's
Sloane Square, along with David
Jackson who was also appearing in the
san>e production. We were both
I auditioned and as a result we were
I signed up for the series as Cally and
j Gan.

How do you feel not having Blake and
Jenna alongside you in the new series?
Well of course I miss them, Sally in par-
ticular because we got on so well, in fact
we are friends now. As far as our two
new members are concerned it's still a
time of discovery for me as we haven't
done that many scenes together yet.
Without giving too much away, can you
say what we can expect of Cally in this
new series?

Cally will be doing more, and
from the scripts I have seen her powers
of telepathy will be used, which pleases
me — it's fun! Again I feel in the
previous scripts this could have been
exploited more, emphasizing that Cally
is an Alien. I'm not sure I'll be having
any love scenes, certainly not before the
sixth episode.

Left: Jacqueline Pearce, mho plays the
villainass Servalan, with guest star
Michael Gough. Above: Jan Chappell as
Cally, a humanoid alien who has tele-
pathic powers.

MKHAEL KEATING

Back to the rehearsals. It's a long hard
day on the Blake's 7 set I Rehearsals
begin mid-moming, and continue
throughout the day until 6 in the
evening. Make-up begins an hour later,
and video taping starts at 7.30, running
through until 10.00pm. The studio is
j then descended upon by workers and
cleaners working overnight to prepare
the floor for the following day's
shooting — be it Blake's 7 or another
production. Because of this an actor's
I schedule can be very tight indeed, but
having spoken to both Paul Darrow and
I Jan Chappell I rrtanaged to corner
Michael Keating, who plays Vila, in the
BBC Club during the evening recess, to
talk to him about his role on Blake's 7.
Starbunt: Have you enjoyed playing the
character of Vila?

Above: Tarrant {Steven Peceyj, surrounded by security guards, makes a break for freedom.

16

STEVEN PACEY

Steven Pacey, the new male Sevener,
looks very much a member of Blake's 7
with hit tall commanding figure, curly
hair and crisp voice.

Hit career spans back to the age of
eleven, working in the theatre, though
he never attended a drama school, and
culminated in The Window Boy in
London alongside Kenneth More.

On the set Steven looks very much
like a younger Roj Blake, but as he
stresses in the interview the two char-
acters are completely different.
Starburst: Who is Tarrant?

Steven Pacey: I think this is going to be
very confusing for ardent fans of Blake's
7 who will take the new character for a
substitute Blake, which in fact he is not.
Blake was an idealist, while Tarrant is
very much the mercenary. He enjoys the
battles, the adventures, wHrere as Blake
always had a goal Tarrant is quite happy
to take risks for no other reason than
say, revenge.

In watching Tarrant aboard the
Liberator set he appears to have become
the new leader.

Yes he does appear rather bossy, doesn't
hel I suppose it is by virtue of being the
pilot, he does tend to make a lot of
decisions about course and firing
instructions, as opposed to Avon.

Going back to episode one of the first
series, the man who originally betrayed
Blake to the Federation was called
Tarrant. Is it the same character you
play?

is is strictly a coincidence. There

Michael Keating: Yes indeed I have, he
has a great personality.

Even though he's sometimes thought to
be a fool and a coward.

Underneath it all he really is quite
brave, he expresses a lot of fears and
worries, but comes through in the end.
Vila represenu a side of me I think. In
the fact we are both very careful, indeed
you could say that Michael Keating is
Vila, I'm sure Paul would agreel
What's in store for Vila in this new
series?

This series is going to expand Vi'^'s
character, the episode we're filming now
is very important for me - I fall in love
and, well . . . wait and see!

Do you miss Gareth Thomas on the set?
He's a great friend, so yes I do. However
the character of Vila would miss Paul
more if he left, because we have this

rapport, he being Avon the genius, and I
the down-to-earth Vila. Our roles offset
each other. An example beirrg the
Gambit episode towards the end of the
last series when Paul and I miniaturize
Orac and break the bank of an inter-
galactic gambling den.

Would you like to do any other science
fiction.^

I wouldn't mind. I'd rather appear in
Star Wars, but I take offers as they
come. Blake's 7 is hard work, it takes up
I a six day week, but it's very enjoyable
and I enjoy hard work.

Below left: Michael Keating plavs Vila in
! the third series of Blake's 7. Below right:
A portrait of a rising young star. Steven
Pacey is the latest addition to the crew
of the Liberator, Tarrant. Above: The
stars of Blake's 7 relax between takes on

17

was also speculation that I was Del
Grant from the last series, again I am
not.

How do you see Tarrant's relationship
with Avon?

There should be a better relationship
between Tarrant and Avon than
between Blake and Avon. We are always
at loggerheads, though we do have our
moments. It's a conflict of egos to a
great extent. They have a mutual
respect for each other.

So you see this season doing well.

Yes indeed, it's going to do great guns!

JOSETTE SIMON

Josette Simon is the second new face to
join the Liberator crew.

Josette Simon is a new face to tele-
vision, indeed this is her first role since
leaving dranrui school — she was spotted
(as is any young actresses' dream) when
along with other drama students she did
camera rehearsals for another BBC tele-
vision series — Star Turn Challenge.
Starburst: How does Dayna come to join
the crew of the Liberator?

Josette Simon: Dayna came from Earth
originally, and was taken to another
planet by her father and brought up >
there, Sarran being the name of the
planet. Dayna specializes, and enjoys
playing with weapons — hunting people
and killing them. Quite an aggressive
person really. But later on I develop
into something more human. If I was
aggressive and unemotional right
through it would become quite boring.
Do you feel in anyway that you are
stepping into the shoes of Sally
Knyvette?

I have thought about it, but I don't
really know much about the character
of Jenna, so I don't feel I'm stepping
into her shoes because I'm not stepping
into the same kind of part. Granted
there were two women in the crew, and
there are now, but that is as far as it
goes and I hope that Blake's 7 fans see it
that way.

Above: Malcolm Bullivantas Benharin the Blake's 7 episode
"Volcano”. Above right: Josette Simon plays Dayna. the
latest addition to the crew of the Liberator.

18

I Do you see yourself as a young idealistic
I terrorist?

I We are not really young terrorists, as
I've said I nnellow out quite dramatically
in fact. Steven is the swashbuckling type
which I think young boys may identify
with, but its not to say the others are
I geriatric though, it's nice to have young
< fresh blood annongst the crew.

PEnRTUDDENHAM

1 ■

' Tucked away in a small black kiosk
i behind the set of the Liberator sits actor
I Peter Tuddenham, who supplies the voice
; of Zen and Orac.

Pater comes from East Anglia and
I has made a study of Anglian dialects in
I his work, supplying many voices and
advising on dialects for television and
radio including Anglia television's Backs
to the Land playing the landlord and
advising the cast, in Arnold Wesker's
theatrical play The Wedding Feast and in
I Sir Peter Hall's film Akenfield.

! He has done numerous radio plays
I and for two years was a member of the
I BBC repertory theatre, becoming Zen
, after auditioning for Blake's 7's first
director Vere Lorrimer.

Starburst: How mbs the voice of Zen
cofKeived?

Peter Thuddenham: Vere didn't know
what sort of voice he wanted, so I, along
with other actors gave several ideas on
what we thought were suitable
computer voices. Not like a Dalek, the
voice had to be a human type, but
slightly metalic, and I was lucky enough
to be chosen.

What did you base your ideas on for the
voice?

Well nothing really, the lines are fairly
human lir>es, not like a Dalek language,
so I just gave what I thought was a
reasonable idea and they liked iti I must
admit this is the first time I've done a
computer voice, but the resF)onse has
been tremendous, I get a lot of letters,
very nice ones, and people want photo-
graphs — I don't know why but ^ey
i want to see what I look like.

I'm sure many people are surprised to
discover that you are Orac as well.

Yes indeed, I was asked to do Orac after
it was decided he was to become a
permanant part of the show. Originally
he was only going to be in one episode,
and I think the actor who played him
when he first appeared didn't wish
to continue as just a voice, though
I could be wrong about this. Anyway I
was asked to do it, and I gave a like
imitation of his voice, but with a little

of me as well. It seems to have been
successful. I'm glad to say.

Orac is very human, almost another
member of the crew.

I've tried to make him tetchy, rather
like — 'These humansi they should
know all about this!" and ^at sort of
thing. The writers have written this sort
of character, I interpret what they
write, though lines may have been
changed at rehearsals the script editor
or director. I don't change them at all.
What is in store for the two computers
this season?

I do not know, I have not received the
final scripts yet. However some interes-
ting things are going to happen to Orac,
though I'm not going to reveal anything.
/ was thinking of a possible rivalry
building up between the two computers.
Well in the episode Dawn of the Gods
Orac and Zen have a scene to them-
selves, only a small one but its quite
interesting I usually record Orac before
taping, and speak Zen's lines along with
the other actors.

Is this your first venture into science
fiction?

It is. And I would like to do nrare. Ill do
anything they ask me to do to the best
of my ability. It's a lovely life because
you never get stale •

Above: Dayna fJosette Simon/, Tarrant fSteven Pacey) and Barthar fMakolm Bullivant/ am captured
by sinister security guards in the episode "Volcano''. Left; Jacquelirte Pearce and veteran tv and film
actor Michael Gough on the set of Blake's 7.

19

T HINGS TO f! OME

The latest news and happenings in the worlds of cinema and television science fantasy

compiled by Tony Crawley.

SON OF ALIEN

An Alien sequel is efoot. Or aclew ... So far,
talk is all it comes down to until the new 20th
Century-Fox executives gM their act together
and finally sort out their hits from their misses.

Three of the original film's producers are
concerned with the new plens. The two part-
ners of The Phoenix Company, David Oiler and
Walter Hill - plus Gordon Carroll. Between
them they form Brandywine Productions, one
of the film combines concerned with the pro-
duction of Alien. There are, however, a few
problems to be worked out first. One is that the
Phoenix duo are leaving the shelter of the Fox
studio, although they still have four projects
bubbling on the Fox stove. With the possibility
of a fifth — and that would be Alien 2, or what-
ever they choose to call it

Ano^er aggravation is that the Fox studio
itself is still going through the angst of a man-
agement shake-up following the departure
(some say, defection) of the head production
chiefs, the guys who okayed Star Wars and
Alien among so many Fox triumphs in recent
years - Alan Ladd Jnr, Jay Kanter and Gareth
Wigan. They flew the coop to set up their own
independent production hatch, the first egg
from which will be Paul Newman's thriller
Madonna Red.

David Giler, scenarist of such movies as The
Black Bird (which he also directed). The Paral-
lax View, Fun With Dick and Jane and Myra
Breckenridge, and Walter Hill (writer-director
of The Warriors, The Driver, writer of The
Getaway and The Mackintosh Man), have been
discussing the form an Alien 2 script would
take. Both men in fact added much to the Dan
O'Bannon script of the original film - too
much so, according to D'Bannon, who has since
announced his own new sf film. Dead and
Buried, with the other Alien producer, Ronald
Shusatt.

But as David Giler reports about the sequel
idea, so far the new Fox chieftains "haven't
told us if they want to do it yet." If they refuse
it, I prophesy another upheaval of the Fox
high-ups very rapidly indeed . . ! This is one
property Fox would not want to lose. And one
thet The Ladd Company would be only too
pleased to pick up. I'm sure.

SPAGHETTI AUEN

Meanwhile, the Italians - and who else? — have
already got into the sequel act. Rome producers
Angliolo Stall and Giro Ippolito say their Alien
2 project will be completed and ready for
world release by January. "Alien is stalking the
earth," runs their publicity hype. "Now, you
can be the next victim."

Dr then again the producers will be, once
the Fox guys go to court to stop them using
their hit title. Stealing their ideas is one thing
... but dammitall sir, a title is sacrosanct!

SPIELBERG'S CCMING

Steven Spielberg - the little man with the
enormous reputation - will make his next
I movie in London. If, that is, he ever stops fidd-
ling about with the last minute and post-
' preview re-editing of his (allegedly) zany
comedy, 1941. The brash wunderkinifi 1980
plans include two films from the same writer
who polished up the late Leigh Brackett's
Empire Strikes Back scenario: Lawrence
I Kasdan. Dr Larry to his friends. And with both
I Lucas and Spielberg utilising him, he has some
very influential pals in Hollywood.

Kasdan will be making his own directing
debut this year with his script of Body Heat. By
that tinte Spielberg will be in London, using the
Lucasfilm British home of Elstree studios from
March or April, to helm the Kasdan version of
the George Lucas-Philip Kaufman story. The
Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Dnce that is in the can — after, no doubt,
another example of frenzied re-editing, 1941
style - Spielberg sticks with the Kasdan trail on
a project titled Continental Divide.

Meanwhile, back in Hollywood, shooting

has begun on the latest Spielberg-John Milius
production. Used Cars - written, produced and
directed by Steve's discoveries Robert Zemeckis
and Bob Gale. The film has Jack Warden in a
duel role and top stars Kurt Russell, John
Carpenter's Elvis.

MEYER’S FIRE

Nicholas Meyer is a director to watch ... As
I trust we already know he's a writer not to be
missed, either. A one-time film publicist,
pushing Love Story among other pap, he first
proved himself as a scenarist with his rivetting
reconstruction of Drson Welles' Mercury
Theatre Compeny's radio version of H.G. Wells'
War of the Worids on Detober 30, 1938 — in
Joe Sargenfs tele-flick. The Night that
Panicked America. He loves mucking about
with his history in a fantasy fashion and now
makes a winning debut as a film maker with
Time After Time. The neat time-warp thriller
has H.G. Wells chasing Jack The Ripper all over
San Francisco in 1979. It's from a story by one
of Meyer's college chums, who was inspired by
Meyer's last film. The Sewn-Per-Cant Solution
(directed in Britain by Herbert Ross) which had
Sherlock Holmes meeting Dr Sigmund FreudI

Why does Meyer go in for such odd, and old
couplings? "Because they tend to speak good
English."

3S TO COME -I- -n- THINGS TO COME + -i- THINGS TO COME -i- -i- -i- THINGS TO COME -i- -i- -i- THINGS TO COME + +

20

ro COME + + + THINGS TO COME + + + T The Crcators of

+ 1

I

I

Below left: Nick Mayer on the tat of
Time After Time (saa Meyer's FireA
Below: Sam Jonas alias Flash Gordon in
tha naw Dim Da Laurantiit tfmoyia of
tha sama nama (saa Flash of FlashA
Right : Tha ad art for tha naw offering
from the Alien team, Dan O'Bannon and
Ronald Shusatt. mentioned last month
but not shown.

I

Originally Meyer wanted to be an actor then
he discovered directing. Writing was just some-
thing he'd done since five years old. "I con-
sider myself a story-teller. I don't usually make
up my own stories. I usually find the nugget of
them somewhere else — and add to them. For
instance, with the adaptation of Tune After
Time, I was influenced by Jean-Luc Godard's
Alphaville (1965), which I saw in college and
never forgot. And I used the Hyatt Regency
Hotel in San Francisco for one of the locations
because it reminded me of the sets in H.G.
Wells' Things To Come (1936), the first great
science fiction film."

He's not wrong, either. The hotel's architect
was also influenced by the great William
Cameron Menzies's sets. And having once
stayed in the hotel, I can vouch for the
inspiration. Every day I was there, I kept
looking around for Raymond Massey . . .

FLASH OF FLASH

Youll get your first glimpse of the new Flash ,
Gordon - actor Sam Jones - in the Blake
Edwards' comedy, 10. Sam plays the husband
of beauteous Bo Oerek. Omella Muti and Bo •
Derek inside a year ... oh why did I quit I
Kting class!

TV FLASH

While Dino De Laurentiis is still at work on
Flash Gordon (Spielberg-style in a gigantic air-
craft hanger at Brooklands), Filmation's tv
series format has started on NBC-TV in the
United States. Aired at 1 1 am and aimed at the

It will take your breath away. . .
all of it.

A RONALD SHUSETT PRODUCTION

A SiMjaoft* O'Bannon Screenplay

kids, the animation show hardly forgets the fKt
that most parents - okay then. Dads - tend to
watch over juvenile shoulders at television time.
So there's bags of violence for the youngsters
and a fair bit of sex for the oldsters. The series,
which as I reported about a year ago had a
heavy cash injection from Dino, is winning both
good reviews and audiences. No news, as yet, of
it turning up on our tv sets. Well probably get
the other new inferior space show instep -
Jason of Star Command.

tration). Tragically, Glen also employed Jack
Palance as guest baddy and Jack played it as if
he were still on the set of The Shape of Things
to Come. Say no morel

Correction: William Conrad, Cannon that
ever was, is the series voice-off narrator and not
as previously reported, the resident villain. Well,
you can't win them all.

BONDAGE

TV BUCKS

Glen Larson's Buck Rogers tv series shot off in
rather nostalgic style with a guest space warrior
proving to be Buster Crabbe, the 1939 Buck.
He's still looking good, though Gil Gerard has
the edge on him, of course. The series' opening
episode was a somewhat titillating affair
entitled Planet of the Slave Girls. Glen Larson
spends his 750,000 dollars per show on effects
more than actors, however, concentrating on
one slave girl only in the very fetching person-
age of Brianne Lery. (Well worth the concan-

Lewis Gilbert is unlikely to tackle the next
Bond movie. For Your Eyes Only. As he told
this column recently, he'd prefer to get back to
directing smaller films. "Obviously a director
likes to work with Kton - that's the real fun
part of making a film. I'd like to make a love
story. A simple love story. But that's not easy
to come by." Sure isn't . . . Lewis has signed
instead to make "the big one of 1980", Oubai,
from the sprawling epic book about the oil rich
by Robin (French Connection) Moore. That'll
keep him busy for some time, too long to be
concerned with 007's next activities. He will.

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21

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though, find time to fit in a short episode with
Roger Moore in the four-country view of men
at liberty for a weekend, Sunday Lover (Gene
Wilder will represent America). Jolly Roger,
too, is well tied up before he returns to Bond-
duty. While he's walked out of a teaming with
Farrah Fawcett in Strictly Business (the film is
now shelved as a result), Moore is booked for
The Sea Wolves with Peck and Niven, and then
takes off (literally) for The High Road To
China, which director Brian Hutton (Where
Eagles Dare) has taken over from John Huston.

BONDAGE II

JERRY CANT

The American James Bond - that's the boast of
Quinn Martin's new tv series, A Man Called
Sloane, with Robert Conrad, ex-Cantennial, ex-
Duke, as a macho secret agent with plenty of
girts and gadgets. Dan O'Hertihy plays his bou,
although he gets hh orders from a computer
with a sexy voice (a neat reversal of Charlie's
Angels, not to mention Mission ImpossiMe).
Conrad is assisted in his weekly derring-do by
the gigantic Ji-Tu Cimbuka, complete with a
steel hand, as if he needs it Conrad glides
through all the mirth and mayhem as if he's
done it all before. And he has, of course. As
James West in The Wild Wild West . . . Which I
seem to recall was hyped as the Wild West's
James Bond! In America television, only the
names are changed to protect the uninspired
writers . . .

CHINA SEA DROME

Surprise, surprise. The Man From Atlantis is the
first American tv series sold to China. The deal
was made with the Chinese Central Television
Station of Beikung. Oh come on, of course you
remember the show. That's the one with
Patlick Ouffey and Barinda Montgomely . . .

LUCAS MUSIC

George's Lucasfilm has launched two new
music publishing combines in partnership with
20th Century-Fox Music Publishing. Bantha
Music is one. Tusken Music is the other,
designed to tend, and no doubt cultivate, the
majesty of the new John Williams score for The
Empire Strikes Back - which will be released as
we all know by now, on Robert Stigwood's
RSO label. Looks like everyone's getting their
cut...

Keep the Jerry Lewis poster we ran on this
column in Starburst 12. For now it looks as if
the film in question will never be made.
Personally, I'm shedding no tears. Did we really
want a Jerry Lewis farce called Hardly Working
Attacks Star Wan? Jerry has had immense
difficulty in obtaining money to complete the
editing and other post-production of his movie

Above: The promotional art for the latest superhero movie from Charles iSt>ider-ManJ Fries.
Below: The poster for the Universal compilation film The Horror Show. Opposite above:
Claudia Jennings, tragicallY killed in a road accident in Malibu (see Obituary J. Opposite
below; The ad art for a new horror offering The Snake.

comeback. Hardly Working, and his next
assignment. That's Life, has been shelved after a
week's shooting. Now unless Hardly Working -
his fint film for eight years - becomes a major
triumph for him, Jerry will hardly win the loot
for his proposed galactic sequel. Couldn't have
happened to a nicer fellow . . .

HORROR TRIP

Not content with scaring the living daylights
out of their studio tourists. Universal is
releasing a winning compilation film detailing
sixty "magical years" of movie monsters.
Anthony Perkins is the host of The Horror
Show, collated, produced and directed by Time
film critic Richard Schikel. Clips include the
old team of Boris and Bela, of course, plus
some Laughton (Mr and Mrs), Claude Rains,

Lon Chaney, Snr and Jr, Vincent Price and
Chris Lee, John Barrymore, Robert Shaw
(Robert Shaw? Oh I see a Jaws itemi) and
taking that fateful shower, Janet Leigh. Sounds
a must for every Fantasy Film Convention from
here on.

HINGS TO COME + + + THINGS TO COME + + + THINGS TO COIVrt + + + THIN

rHINGS TO COME + + + THINGS TO COI^

SPACE WORLD

Stand by for the latest American leisura dome
- Space World. This is a million dollar theatre
complex, based on the NASA simulator, which
will give you the feeling of space flight, weight-
lessness and all. Due to open in New York in
1981, and thereafter around the world over the
next five years. Space World is basically an
hydraulically controlled theatre, using the
maximum gravitational forces allowed for
commercial purposes by the Federal Aviation
Administration. Film producer-director Joseph
Strkk (Ulysses, etc) is in charge of the project,
a combination of three theatres - two that
move via computer programming in time with
movies depicting space travel. The foyer will be
designed as a space port, beyond that a 76-saat
theatre will be used for a pre-flight briefing, and
indeed pre-flight medkais to see if the paying
customer can live through the coming expe-
rience. And two 38 seat theatres will simulate
blast-off and whizzing through the heavens. The
computer has already been overworking,
itemising that the Space World will deal with
300 people an hour, 80 hours a week, at 3.50
dollars a head, grossing 84,000 bucks a week
and that means a profit of 21,000 dollars right
there.

Personally I could take it or leave it. In fact
I'll await the obvious film version of what goes
wrong. Airport style. When the theatres spin
out of control and take off for real . . .

STAR WORLD

CHUCK'S CARTOONS

London will also have a new tourist attraction,
soon. The huge wine cellars beneath the
London Palladium are being converted into a
collection of nostalgic stage and screen attrac-
tions: a Western movie street, a crypt of movie
horrors, a display of Hollywood sea adventures,
a replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a
silent film area and a gallery of movie rogues
with more than a hundred life size figures.
The man behind the scheme is our old friend,
Michael Carreras, the Hammer Films chief.
Must say while it all sounds fine enough, it
could have been rather more British . . . What's
a High Noon street or Hollywood seven seas
number got to do with Argyle Street or the
London Palladium?

For the first time in ten years, Warner Brothers
are making cartoon programmers again. (Well,
they can afford to. In the first nine months of
last year, their films earned a staggering total of
over 332 million-dollars - the best figure in the
studio's 56 year history). Chuck Jones, who
else, is taking charge of the new cartoons, and
so one is a new Roadrunner short. More
important to Mesrs Spielberg and Lucas is that
Chuck is also making a sequel to their favourite
cartoon. Duck Dodgers in the 24th (^tury.
Title: What else but Duck Dodgen and the
Return to the 24th Century.

HINGS TO COME + + + THINGS TO COM

OBITUARY

Willis Goldbeck, co-screenwriter of Todd
Browning's Freala (1932) has died aged 80 in
Long Island, New York. A writer, producer and
director since the earliest days of Hollywood
(he flew with the British in World War I), he
worked on most of the original Dr Kildare films
and produced two of John Ford's final movies
Sergeant Ruthledga and The Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance . . . Catherine Lacey, doyenne
of the British stage and screen, died aged 75;
her first movie was the original Lady Vanishes
(1938), and she was Boris Karloff's wife in
Michael Reeves' The Sorceren (1967) . . . And
tragically in the very week her Roger Corman
movie, Deathsport, opened in London, 29 year
old beauty, Claudia Jennings, was killed in a
head-on road smash in Malibu. A Playboy Play-
mate of the Year in 1970, Claudia (real name:
Mimi Chesterton) made, a name for herself in
innumerable cheap-jack movies for several of
the Corman ilk: The Unholy Roller, Truck Stop
Women, etc, and co-starred with David Carra-
dine in Deathsport, the Corman's company's
sequel to Death Race 2000 . . .

Les Clark, 71, the last of the Disney team
who worked on the first Mickey Mouse car-
toon, Steamboat Willie, in 1929, has died of
cencer in retirement in Santa Barbara. Les went
to work for Walt Disney straight after leaving
school on March 15, 1927, and worked on all
the Disney classics from Snow White end the
Seven Dwarfs to The Rescuers . . .

Production of a new American horror-fan-
tasy, The Bloodthirsty Monster, was delayed in
Cleveland, following the sudden death of pro-
ducer Herman I. Spero, aged 55.

FRANKEN_

MAC'S FLIP

Paramount might find better tv fortune in a
new script from John D. MacDonald. Best
known as the author of the Travis McGee
privete-eye thrillers, MacDonald has completed
an sf item called The Girl, The Gold Watch and
Everything. Subject: a watch that can suspend
time - end does so. Amazing what these quartz
thingies can do, isn't it?

Just fill in the blank. Yeah, Frankenstein is
back on the prowl again. For an NBC-TV movie
this time. Marvin Chomsky directs The Frenken
Project which features Robert Vaughn as the
fourth generation descendant of Dr Victor F.
And up to no good. I'll be bound! Certainly
fnakes a change of pace from Vaughn's recent
work. He's been touring the United States,
Leonard Nimoy style - in a one-man show
about President Roosevelt.

SCANNING

Update on David Cronenberg's most expensive
Canadian sf film. Scanners. It's about a group
of people bom in the 1940s, all exposed to
some kind of drug, which enables them as
adults to scan people's minds. Not that it stops
there. "The powers they possess are terrifying,"
adds a Cronenberg aide. 'Today, they have
decided to take over. The nightmare has begun
when extrasensory powers become weapons of
destruction." Sounds to me like Son of the
Fury.

QUICKIES

Toronto's Nelvana Films doing well with sales
of their animation special, Intergalactic Thanks-
giving or Please Don't Eat The Planet . . . Ernest
Borgnine goes from The BiKk Hole to Danny,
The Super Snooper with Italy's big, burly Bud
Spencer . . . Dino De Laurentiis has had a new
24 kilowatt studio lamp named after him by
cinematographer Gil Taylor; so now the Dino
lamp will join the brutes and dogs and other
oddly named arcs . . . Flash's gorgeous Italian
playmate Orenella Muti is sontehow fitting in
her London space work with two new movies in
Rome. She obviously travels back and forth by
rocket . . . Latest American sf movie notion is
Space Coach, which puts the John Ford/John
Wayne classic Western, Stage Coach (1939) into
the heavens. Doesn't it make you want to
puke . . ?

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23

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YAMATO AND SHIPS

Humble Pie Depertment. There I wes, way back
in Starburst 2, ridiculing Japan's Space Craisar
Yamato movie. The farce, I dubbed it, as
opposed to George Lucas' Force. Well, it tran-
spires that old Yamato had quite a considerable
force of its own. The first two Yamato movies
have cleaned up in Japan and various inter-
national territories, including Latin America,
and Yoshinobu Nishizaki's Academy Pro-
ductions of Tokyo have now picked up 3
million dollan in America by selling the tv
series version to some 55 independent stations.
In tele-form, Yamato is called Star Blazer and
comprises some 52 half-hour episodes — a fact
that was, alas, all too clear in the first movie.

In December, Nishizaki begins work on
Yamato III. Then, he intends making a live-
action version as well. He's already been
shopping in Washington for some old unused or
unwanted American battleship. The US Navy
Department, it seems, doesn't quite go for this
idea. If he can't find his battleship, Mr Nishi-
zaki says he will utilise his own 120ft cruiser,
instead. Damned clever, these Japanese.

CHEEKY

Can't resist this item. Hear tell Lord Lew
Grade's US-tv combine is making a tv-film
about a young cop. Title: Sawed Off Justice.

Right and
below: Caught tt
a racant signing
at a fantasy
bookshop in
London, craator/
Artist of Eaglet
Dan Dare, Frank
Hampson. Frank
was signing
copiat of tha
racantty pub-
lishad Bast of
tha Eagla
coHaction and
Dan Dare: Tha
Man from
Nowhere.

^3^

ki

• ^ m-

L

■ • t a

SON OF QUICKIES

Robin Williams will be morking most of his
Popeye film in Malta . . . After Flash Gordon,
director Mike Hodges will shoot his own script
of Say Goodnight Lilian, Goodnight . . . Italy
I gets back into the Jaws trade with Franco Nero
as The Shark Huntar . . . John Carpenter's
Better Lata Than Never tv movie script about
old folks breaking out of a geriatric home,
finally aired in America; actor Richard Crenna I
directed; badly . . . Also released on the US |
tube: Captain America and Stephen King's |
“Salem's Lot both as two-parter movies . . .
Olivia Newton John's new film, Xanadu, is
offically called a fantasy-musical, oh dear . . .

RESPITE I

I Brian Oe Palma takes a well earned (much i
needed) rest from pyrotechnical fantasy and i
I reverts to his earliest form of zany cinema in his |

I latest release. Home Movies, unveiled recently I
, at the Edinburgh festival. This is the film he
first told us about, however briefly, in Starburst
{ 5. Reminiscent of his gallows humour !
comedies. Greetings and Hi Mom, the film is a ,
unique case of a top-flight director encouraging i
youngsters into movie-making, and judging by |
the fun result everyone - De Palma and his I
Fury star, Kirk Douglas, included - had a ball. |
De Palma was taking a class at the Sarah j
Lawrence College in New York. Subject: The i
making and selling of an independent film. How
I better to teach them than to get his class out on
; the sheets making a film and then selling it —

I which is s:::rt!y what they did. Kirk uouglas
plays a very Godardian guru, running a cult
called Star Therapy with the motto: "Put your
name over the title". He's continually filming
himself, his life, his every move - just one of
the various films within the film within the film
of Home Movies.

i George Lucas proves the real guru of the
I project, however. "George told me. You should
I go out there end just make a picture with a
I bunch of kids - be just terrific," explains
j Brian. "So I just got started. The only way to
I do something is to start doing it. I took the
I time off, pushed everything else back and went
I ahead and did it It was hard work because I
I was dealing with all kids and non-professionals.

But we got through it. It's a comedy, so it's
I really hard to describe ... It came from a sto^
I'd written and worked up into a screenplay in
I screenwriting class, and the kids worked in all
aspects of the production from actors to
producers and assistant directors ... I tried to
show them what to do if you had to work with
what you could lay your hands on." Not many
film classes can lay hands on Kirk Douglas,
Brian De Palma, nor indeed Mrs De Palma,
Nancy Allen. She has the best role of her film
life in the movie. Or it's the best until she com-
pletes her return to terror tactics in Dressed To
Kill with Michael Caine and Angie Dickinson.

I

j

I

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24

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RESPITE II

I Encouraged no doubt by De Palma's return to a
small film, Steven Spielberg is reactivating his
plans to make After School, a project influ-
enced by Francois Truffaut's L'Argent do
poche. Once 1941 is fully in the bag, Spielberg
goes off to his old home town, Phoenix, Ari-
zona, to shoot the 28-day film for 1.5 million
I dollars - about the cost of each big stunt in
I 1941. "It's about suburban children, gangs of
' kids, between 3pm when they get out of school
and when they get home for supper at 6pm.
They're really young adults, street smart, dis-
covering drugs at ten, sex at eleven and a lot of
j it is greatly to do with the influence of tele-
, vision on children today. How they live out the
! fantasies of Charlie's Angels - how that
becomes the most important thing in those
after school hours."

"We've all been talking about doing a small
film again," explains Brian Oe Palma. "But then
George got very involved with Star Wars, of
I course and producing three pictures: More
{ American Graffiti, The Empire Strikes Back
and French Postcards. Steven was always set to
go on his project. I sat in when he was casting.
He was into heavy pre-production and I don't
know exactly why he stopped, whether it was
script problems or pressure to start on 1941. 1
think it has a lot to do with the fact that I have
a lot of experience in making low-budget

Above: Th» original promotional pottar for the Stavan Spialbarg comady movia 1941.

movies while Steven was brought up in a ve^ ! Wars, he makes them like he made THX 1138,
structured system. George knows a lot about it, ! almost like a student working on everything. I
also. I mean, if he nrakes pictures like Star | mean he just works on evsrythingV •

THINGS TO COME + + -t- THINGS TO COME + + + THINGS TO COME + + -l- THINGS TO COME -f + -k THINGS TO COM

1

I

I

I

IN NEXT MONTH'S ISSUE OF

^ 4A The ntaking of a new sf film

1 starring Kirk Douglas and

w-mww w Fawcett (Majors).

With reviews of
The STAR TREK niovie,
THE BLACK HOLE,
and METEOR,
an interview with
Sandy Howard and
Tom Baker & Graham

Williams (star and prod-
ucer of DOCTOR WHO).
And features on
FANTASTIC VOYAGE &
LAND OF THE GIANTS.
Plus all your favourite
regular features.

25

INTER\/IEW FART2

PRODUCER

DAVID

MALONEY

BACK IN STARBURST6, WE
SPOKE WITH WRITER TERRY
NA TION ABOUT HIS TV SERIES
BLAKE'S 7. THIS ISSUE, JOHN
FLEMING TALKS TO THE
CREATIVE FORCE BEHIND
THE SERIES, BBC TV
PRODUCER DA VI D MALONEY.

D avid Maloney started as a journalist
on the Birmingham Evening Des-
patch, then went on to train in the
Birmingham Repertory Theatre School.
For eight years, he worked around the
country as an actor. He says he found
stage work in London's West End "very
boring — the sense part for months on
and". But, at the same time, acting was a
vary insecure profession, so he joirwd
BBC TV as a floor manager.

One of the shows he worked on was

the Dr Who series starring William
Hartnell. He remembers that "characten
used to stand around the control panel
and talk at great, great length in the early
part of the series. The characten talked
incessantly. And the plots were depen-
dent on character: the character of
Hartnell".

After a few yean floor managing,
Maloney went on the BBC director
training coune and then "did all the
traditional drama directing work like
Z-Cars and Softly Softly". But he was
particularly interested in costume dransa.
Ha directed a series based on Fenimore
Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, followed
by its sequel The Pathfinder. He also
directed two Walter Scott serials Ivanhoe
and Woodstock.

Then he moved to Dr Who as a dir-
ector "not because I'm that interested in
sci-fi or space but simply because it was a
much more imaginative programme to
work on. There was a chance to experi-
ment with pictures and ideas". He
worked with Patrick Troughton, Jon
Pertwee and Tom Baker. Over the years,
he directed more Dr Who episodes than

anyone except Douglas Camfield.
Maloney says, "Dr Who was like making
as much as you could while you could
until somebody blew a whistle. Then you
stopped and made the best programme
out of what you'd got."

Blake's 7 was Maloney's fint series as
producer and Starburst talked to him as
he was starting recordings for the show's
third season.

Starburst: Well, what is a producer?

David Maloney: A producer is what
Sydney Newman (former BBC Head of
Drama) said he is: a midwife who stands
by watching the programme being born.

If you're making thirteen programmes in
a series, it's impossible for one director to
direct that number of consecutive
episodes. So you have a team of directors
and therefore you need planning for

26

them, because they fight like cat and dog
to get facilities and make their show the
best. They need a chairman and they
need an awful lot of decisions taken for
them about the group, the group attitude
and the group policy. It's very interesting
to talk to the different directors and to
hear their version of what the series is
supposed to be about. It does need a
guiding hand when there is a group of
people who are all working on the same
project. I've not directed anything except
the 26th episode (the last episode of
series 2). My time has been full of coping
with this programme.

At the beginning, the BBC seemed to
blow hot and cold about Blake. When the
first series ended, it wasn't certain if there
would be a second.

Well, it's a very expensive programme to
put out early in the evening. There are far
less expensive programmes which go out
in prime time. And I think they possibly
found it (pause) difficult being sure
whether they could afford such an
expensive programme to go out at 7.20 in
the evening.

/ believe the budget was increased for the
second series.

Yes, well we were under-budgeted for the

first series and we had a sufficient budget
on the second series and we've got more
or less that same budget this time. As
we're a low-budget show anyway, I don't
really feel that our budget can be
improved now unless we get ten times the
money we've got - and the time, because
time is money. We make one every ten
days, after all, and that really . . . (laughs)
. . . is the crux of the matter. It makes it a

very fast show.

/ heard Programme Planning Department
thought of it as cops and robbers in outer
space.

Yes. Terry Nation and I discussed the
image of the programme, what we could
do and what we could advertise that
we're doing. And we decided it could
only be a "space adventure" — we
couldn't really call ourselves in any sense

Top: Avon (Paul Darrow) checks over an awsonne array of
weapons. Left: The two new additions to the crew of the
Liberator, Dayna Uosette Simon) and Tarrant [Steve
Pacey). Above: The Thaarn (Marcus Powell).

Opposite: Jacqueline Pearce as the evil Servalan, who
plans to capture the Liberator for herself.

27

Right: Cally Uan
Chsppell) keeps
The Thaarn
{Msrcus Powell)
covered. Below:
The new lir>e up,
Heft to right)
Tarrant (Steve
Pecev), Dayna
Uotette Simon).
Avon )Paul
Derrow), Cally
Uan Chappell) and
Vila [Michael
Keating). Oppo-
site: The Liberator
herself in a scerte
from the second
series.

Terry Nation wrote in the new computer
Orac at the end of the first series. (The
ship's computer Zen was already estab-
lished.) And once it had boasted to them
that it could get more or less any infor-
mation that they wanted, we decided it
was too dangerous because it would
always predict the unknown and they
wouldn't go into (any dangerous situ-
ation) and then there would be no
adventures. So we built into Orac a char-
acter fault, an irascibility, so that it
wasn't always available — it had whims —
it was busy collecting information from
other places and was not available, took
time. Therefore it wasn't as infallible as it
first appeared to be. Useful but not
always reliable.

One brave thing you've done is kill off

centra! characters.

Yes, we killed off a character played by
David Jackson (Gan) after 17 episodes -
in the middle of the second series. And
there was an outcry about that because
people like him — children liked him — he
had a sort of innocence that communi-
cated to children.

And you killed off the central villain
Travis.

Yes, we killed him off at the end of the
second series. That's the one I directed —

I put him down a sort of a well, (laughs)
Surely it's dangerous to kill off a hero
and a centra! villain. You risk losing
audience involvement.

I don't think so. We have kept one of the
villains (Servalan). But the danger of
having a permanent, resident "house

Top: Steven Pacey, who plays Tarrant, and Josette Simon, who plays
Dayna, relax on the set of the new Blake's 7 series.

Above: The Starship Liberator

villain" is that you're going to get the
same situations repeating themselves. If
the villain isn't going to win, we're going
to get too "formula" - the villains are
always springing a trap and the heroes are
always escaping and the villains are
always being left with egg on their faces.
We had this problem at the beginning of
the second series and so we deliberately
wrote an episode (Weapon) where the
villains won. They didn't actually capture
the heroes or the ship, but they won the
game just to make them respectable
again, just because they were losing too
often.

Is that why Gan was killed off?

No, Gan was killed off in an arbitrary
way.

David Jackson just wanted to leave?

Above: Michael Keating as Vila. Below:
Two Dickensian characters who turn up in
the new series of Blake's 7.

30

No, he didn't want to leave. It was some-
thing of a whim, I think. We wanted to
shock at that point in the series, because
everything had seemed so regular and
we'd kept the same group on the space-
ship. I think the point was to jerk the
audience.

/ was surprised when Travis was killed
off, because you’d already changed the
actor.

Yes, we'd changed the actor after the first
series. Stephen Greif, who played Travis
in the first series was making a (tv) film,
which he wanted to do very badly and he
couldn't re-join us. He very much wanted
to do that and it clashed, so we decided
to re-cast the part and bring the same
character back.

Why did you decide to re-cast rather than
kill him off or ignore him?

Well, Terry Nation, the creator, rather
felt that he wanted to make more mileage
out of the character and so we re-cast
him.

Was this a good idea?

In retrospect?

Well, you were looking dubious.

(Pause) I'm not sure. The reason that we
decided to keep the character was that, so
far, he had been very successful. We had a
sli^tly comic-strip gimmick-villain who
had only one eye and a raygun
(imbedded) in his left hand. And we
decided by a process of analysis that, if
we killed him off, we'd only be looking
to create the same kind of villain again.

So, in that he'd been successful, perhaps
it was best to leave it alone.

How have you tried to make series 3
different from the previous two?

Well, the series will be different because it
will have more one-off disconnected
adventures. With the power of the Fede-
ration destroyed, as it is at the beginning
of the third series, and the federated
worlds having disintegrated, the
Federation having lost control, there is
more chaos and confusion and, although
we have Servalan still wanting to acquire
the Liberator, we have a chance for more
single stories. We still have mainline series
stories, but we're not so heavily for-
matted in terms of the Federation. We've
got one real fantasy episode written by
the science fiction novelist Tanith Lee.
Are you having more unconnected stories
so that American stations can run the
series out of sequerxe like Dr Who?

No. Some of the series can be run out of
sequerKe, but some of it has a serial
connection. I think that's one of the big
differences between British and American
series. The Americans tend to want a con-
stant style throughout. In fact, they fire
their directors as soon as the shooting is
over and the editing is done by the
producer. They tend to want the episodes
to be interchangeable, whereas British
actors like to work on a line of character
development so that it's difficult to put
one episode away from another one

because they're actually developing their
characters and very much building on
what's happened to their character in the
history of the series.

The same presumably goes for the series
producer.

We're constantly seeking to get the style
right for the series. What I decided at the

Tht two newest members of Bleke's 7 explore

the surface of an alien planet.

beginning of the first series was that any-
thing which didn't work in terms of story
or visuals we should change. We shouldn't
bother too much about continuity. If it
didn't work, we'd throw it out and get
something else. So there would be subtle
changes until we got things that we
thought were working.

/ didn’t notice any changes during the
first series. Were there any?

In subtle ways. Details. Guns and all sorts
of things.

One thing that did strike me about the
style is that they dress like Robin Hood
and his merry men.

Yes, that was the costume designer at the
time. It wasn't deliberate. We actually
had that image in mind, but it wasn't
meant to be transmitted. We just used
Robin Hood sometimes as a springboard
for ideas.

Ideas?

Well, we went back over what happened
to Robin Hood. We actually based an
episode on Blake being captured by the
equivalent of the Sheriff of Nottingham
and then being freed and escaping.

Can too much action detract from
characterisation?

Well, action usually means film and, as we
generally have the same amount of film

content, you get the same amount of
action.

Have you thought of altering the percen-
tage of film on the new series?

No, it's an economic fact and it's very
difficult. We have four ways of making
pictures. One is with a film camera on
exterior location. One is going onto a
stage at (the BBC Television Film Studios
in) Ealing and making interiors. Then
there's the video studio work. And finally
there's model filming work. In the time
that we have, we can't ever take a full 50
minutes into the studio: there just isn't
time. We have to take 20% off and pre-
pare it (on film) before we go there.

So scheduling is till one of your main
problems?

Situations aren't usually as complex as
they were when we started Blake's 7. We
started with, as it turned out, not quite a
big enough budget and we started off on
a tighter schedule. In our ten days, we
were not only rehearsing the actors and
taking them into the studio, but also
filming for three days for future episodes.
That process is known as strike filming. It
meant a much heavier drain on the actors'
energy and also much more complex
scheduling in terms of how we got actors
out of rehearsal to send them away to
some other place to film, bring them back
again having missed days of rehearsal and
then take them into the studio. It was
very, very exhausting for the actors.

And what’s the reaction been? Totally
enthusiastic?

Oh no — it's a very controversial pro-
gramme. Half the people one knows
really hate it

It has been a success, though. Do you
think it would have been so successful if
Star Wars hadn’t whetted people's
appetites?

Well, I wonder how many people have
actually seen Star Wars in this country.
We have had audiences of over ten million
watching one episode of Blake's 7. How
many people have seen Star Wars, I
wonder. It would be interesting to know.

I wonder if Blake's 7 might be whetting
the appetite for Star Wars and that type
of film.

If there’s a fourth series of Blake's 7, will
you still be producing it?

I can probably say I'm moving on now to
other projects. So there would probably
be a new person on it.

What are you moving on to?

Day of the T riffids #

And on that cryptic note we leave
David Maloney. We at Starburst could
hardly contain our curiosity at the
final remark of the interview and
managed to extract a promise from
Mr Maloney to tell us more about his
next protect as soon as the plans
become final. Watch for further
developments.

31

I am writing to you in the hope
that you can supply me with the
answers to a few questions which
I think may be of interest to your
readers.

Every time I tee an episode
guide for Star Trek, three of the
listed episodes always puzzle me,
because I don't believe they have
ever been shown on television in
this country. The episodes I refer
to are: The Empath, Whom Cods
Destroy and Plato's Stepchildren.
Although most Star Trek episodes
have now been aired at least three
times to my knowledge, I do not
recall having seen these particular
episodes. Were the titles changed
for some reason? Or did the BBC
ban thase episodes altogether?

If I am correct about the
scarcity of these episodes in
Britain, could the BBC not be
persua^d to show them now?

Congratulations on a superior
sf magazine, much better value
for money than any other similar
magazines on the market.

Paul Oeegan, Huyton, Liverpool.

After exhaustive research (we
consulted our resident tv expert
Tise Vahimagi) we managed to
track down some inforrrtation on
the Star Trek episodes to which
you refer, Paul. Plato's Step-
children (Season 3) was indeed
banned in this country. This seg-
ment was long on sadism and
contained television's first
interracial kiss. Presumably the
BBC felt that the sadism content
was not the sort of thing they
wanted screened in Britain, and
remember that in 1969, when this
episode was made, race was a far
more sensitive area than it is now.

Whom Gods Destroy (Season
3) concerned the murderous
leader of an insane asylum who
instigates a revolt to seize the
Enterprise and with the help of
his lunatic comrades conquer the
Universe. It is difficult to see
what the BBC could have
objected to in that segment
Perhaps they felt that lunacy was
a delicate area too.

The Empath has been screened
in this country. Associate Editor
Alan McKenzie distinctly
remembers seeing it during the

show's first run at the BBC. How-
ever, it is thought that the episode
has not been repeated since.

As to whether the missing
episodes will ever be screened in
Britain, it is likely that the BBC
ordered Star Trek by the season,
barring the shows they were hesi-
tant to screen. Perhaps Star Trek
The Motion Picture will generate
enough viewer interest to per-
suade the BBC to seek out the
missing episodes and purchase
them.

I would lika to point out a coupla
of errors in John Fleming's fea-
ture, The Lost Worlds, in Star-
burst 12.

Willis O'Brien teamed up with
producer Herbert M. Dawley to
make a film called Ghost of
Slumber Mountain in 1917.
Following completion of the six
reel feature, Dawley decided to
take full credit for the film's
creation, even going to far to take
out various patents on full size
armatures of the monsters in the
film, and saying in interviews at
tha time that he had created the
effects for the film.

O'Brien naturally objected and
the release of Ghost of 9umber
Mountain was delayed till 1919,
at which point Dawley cut The
Ghost in half, releasing the second
part as Along tha Moonbeam
Trad. It is common knowledge
that Dawley did nothing else than
provide the financial backing for
O'Brien's animation work, though
all the postan for The Ghost only
mention Dawley's name The
Ghost was a huge success and
despite its short running time had
a massive advertising campaign. It
grossed 100,000 dollars in its
opening week in New York.

As for the Irwin Allen 1960
version, O'Brien was contracted to
make stop motion animation
models for that film, however
Allen decided costs would not
allow it and used instead photo-
graphically enlarged lizards, which
were obviously put through con-
siderable pain in the making of
the film.

It should also be noted that
not all the models from the 1925

Lost World are lost. Remnants are
held by Forrest J. Ackerman in
his museum of the fantastic in
Los Angeles.

It is a shame that John did not
seek out Bessie Love who lives in
London, and has. I'm sure, many
interesting stories to tell about
her experiences on making the '25
classic.

Phil Edwards, London W14.

I am vary impressed with the
presentation and concept of your
magazine. You have the right
balance of pictures and articles
without wasting valuable space.

On reading John Brosnan's
feature on Irwin Allen (Starburst
13) I found him to be a little too
critical of a man who saems to
have produced a number of
successful television series and
films.

A good idea for the future
would be to review the work of
Chris Foss, the great science
fiction artist, with possibly a port-
folio of his best pieces.

While I disagree with Matthew
Waterhouse's comments (Letters,
Starburst 13) that American tele-
vision science fiction is com-
parable to junk food when Britain
is responsible for low-budget
soap-operas in space like Doctor
Who and Blake's 7 I agree that
most of our science fiction is
aimed at a more intellectual
audience.

Looking at Robert Mager's
letter on your look at American
magazines in Starburst 8. 1 think
that while Omni is a very infor-
mative magazine, it is obviously
intended for affluent coffee
tables.

Please excuse my ignorance,
but when was the independent
publisher, Starburst Magazines,
taken over by Marvel Comics
Group?

Here's to the futurel
David Simnett, London SE4.

The first issue of Starburst pub-
lished by Marvel Comics, David,
was Starburst 4, whkh coinci-
dently cover featured The
Incredible Hulk.

I really anjoyed reading issue 14
of Starburst and there was not

one part of the magazine I dis-
liked. For a start, the changes in
the cover design gave it a more
mature look than previous issues.
The only thing that spoiled the
cover, in my opinion, was the
blurb in the bottom left comer
proclaiming Starburst to be
"Britain's No 1 Sciance Fantasy
Media Magazine - 1 know it isl

The Alien review by John
Brosnan was excellent and I most
especially agreed with what he
said in the last paragraph about
the inevitability of a flood of
Alien rip offs. I hope Starburst
warns us of the real stinkers
before we make the mistake of
paying money to see them.

The Avengers article wasn't
too bad either and like the first
instalment in issue 13, 1 quite
enjoyed part 2.

The interview with Tony
Harding was also good, especially
since I enjoy the BBC science
fantasy shows and have been a fan
of Doctor Who for some time.
Most people, as Tony Harding
said, tend to point out how bad
the bad points are, while they
seem to overlook the good. For
instance, there is the excellent
portray^ of the Doctor by Tom
Baker which is, to say the least,
different.

The feature on the French
film, Gandahar vs the Metal
Warriors was visually interesting
and informative, and as usual
Things to Come covered just
about all the news concerning sf
on tv and in the cinema.

After the letters page, which
contained some interesting letten
came the article on the old
science fiction serials. This by far
and away the best article I have
read for a long time. It's this type
of feature which makes me enjoy
reading Starburst so much and
makes me look forward to each
new issue.

Ian D. Churchward, Torquay.

Send all comments to:

Starburst Letters,

Marvel Comics.

Jadwin House.

205-211 Kentish Town Road,

London NWS.

fof?AaPftPE^ 5 ftCK 5
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a'HRM 5. 02.1 - 60 -or^eS.

Abova: Terror in space/ Or more precisely It, Th« Tarror from Bayond Spaca
(t9S8i. The movie (from which Allan lifted liberally} featured Ray "Crash"
Corrigan in a snarling rubber suit. The crew of the invaded ship fitutHy suited up
and pulled the plug on the oxygen supply, making short work of poor old Crash.
Right: Rock star David Bowie as he appeared in Tha Man Who Fall to EartK (1975).

Above: Tha Monolith Monttan are crystaline meteors vA>ich. when wet.

absorb the silicon from living creatures, turning them to stone. A
cloudburst causes the alien rocks to advartce towards a town, irtcreasing
in size as they go. Finally their progress is halted by salt. Jack Arnold
and director John Shervvood pleaded guilty as charged ( 1957).

ALIEN PORTFOLIO

34

Way back in Starburst 10, we presented a feature on Aliens of the movies. This
month we decided to assemble a special pictorial feature from the pictures that were
squeezed out first time around due to lack of space. Captions by Alan Murdoch.

Top right; Tha two monsters pictured appear in
Monstan (1977). Summoned from "Sp^ M" by two intelligent
cockroaches (!) the creatures are defeated by GodsiUa and Anguirus.
Above right: The alien from Jack Arnold’s The Space Children
resembles a giant brain. Its mission on Earth: to prevent the launching
of an atomic missna by the American Authorities.

Above: The Green Slitna (1968) was an American/Japanese coisroduction in
which grotesque alien lumps invaded a space station and began to multiply at a
furious rate. The movie is a strong contender for the Worst SF Film of All Time
award. Below left: In the 1967 Roger Vadim movie Barbarella, Jane Fonda (in
the title role) met an alien angel played by John Philip Law.

35

AUEN PORTFOLIO

36

Left: Th« Qiiaan of Outar Spaco (1958) featured Zsa
Zta Gabor and concerr>ed the ruler of Venus, a des-
potic, hideously scarred matriarch
e/ho wants to conquer Earth.

Abova: The lovely Dr Ruth Adams (played by the
equally lovely Faith Domergue) and the grotesque
Metaluna Mutant (that's stuntman Eddie Parker
under Bud Westmore's makeup) attempt the
Military Twostep in this posed publicity still. Thii
Island Earth (1955).

Centre left: Margaret Field meets The
Man from Planet X (1950). Bottom left; A hapless
astronaut confronts a one-eyed brain during his
Journey to tha Seventh Planet (1961).

37

AUENPORTFOUO

A

V

-U.

,1

Top left: Photocall on the set of This Island Earth (1956)
again. Faith Domergue poses with a group of Metaluna's
more handsome inhabitants. Top right: The title stars of
Day of the Triffids (1963) were ten foot tall walking plants
with a taste for human flesh. Here a triffid takes Janette
Scott for the chef's Plat de Jour. Above: The hero of It
Came from Outer Space (1953), Richard Carlson, comes
face to face with two of the "its", who have the power to
assume human shape. The giveaway is that their eyes have a
healthy glint to them.

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FEATURE BY BENNY ALDRICH

Every four years the Annual World Science
Fiction Convention moves its location outside
the United States for the benefit of SF fans
around the world. The current favourite for the
1983 World Con being Australia.
But this last year, 1979, saw the event take on
the name ^acon as its base moved to sunny
Brighton on the South East coast of England.
Much to the bewilderment of local citizens
and sunseeken alike, over 3000 SF fans (of all
shapes, sizes and natiorralities) gathered at the
Metropole for five days of film and drinks,
lectures and drinks, panels and drinks, book
trading and drinks, plus the odd opportunity for

quick refreshment.
... In the world of science fiction fans, the
British contingent has a proud record as upstan-
ding (oft downward-tumbling) drinkers, and it's
highly likely a far greater profit was made by the
hotel bar than all of the book dealers put

together.

But, between these bouts, a highly commen-
dable variety of events took place — making
Seacon one of the best conventions held in
Britain over the last ten years.
Guests of honour were top American fantasy
novelist Fritz Leiber (best known for his Fafhrd
and Gray Mouser series) and Great Brit Brian
Aldiss. But present also were many of the top
talents of science fiction today, irtduding (other
than those pictured right) Harry Harrison, Alfred
Bester, David Kyle, Anne M^^affrey and. Bob

Shaw.

Movies were well represented also, with fea-
ture films including the original BBC-tv Quater-
mass and the Pit, Superman (1978), Star Wars,
Eraserhead, invasion of the Body Snatchers
(1978) and over 30 others, under the direction of
Leroy Kettle and Starburst-er John Brosnan.
John Baxter chaired a special effects talk with
Derek Meddingi (Superman, James Bond) talking
about movies, and Mat Irvine (Doctor Who,
Blake's 7) talking about TV.
Both Nigel Kneale (Quatermass, Beasts) and
Val Guest (veteran Hammer director) gave talks,
as did producer Gary Kurtz — on The Empire
Strikes Back. Arthur C. Clarke discussed his
involvement in the movie 2001: A Space
Odessey, and Dez Skinn tried to avoid promoting
Doctor Who Weekly too often while interviewing

Tom Baker.

A film-writers' panel included John Baxter,
John Brosnan, Philip Strick.Forry Ackerman .
Christopher Reeve was also on hand, though
he looked somewhat startled to be nwt at the
main convention entrance by two Stormtroopers.

Nantes familiar to comic book fantasy lovers
were also in attendence, including X-Men award-
winning author Chris Claremont, DC editor/
writer Paul Levitz and artist Joe Staton.
For those of you who missed it, here are a few
photos of some of the celebrities present . . .

SEACON

40

mON convention: BRKMTON 1979 n

Above: Chris fi»eve. without the kiss curt which helped make
him an instant super-star, draw one of the larger Queues
imaginable when he agreed to a signing session. Below: Larry
Niven, looking bleary eyed following his signing session!

>■

f

Facing page: Frederik Pohl (top), Jerry Pournelle (middle)
and Theodore Sturgeon. Above: Panelists John Brunner and
Joe Haldeman (top). Brian Aldiss (either mid-pun or mid-
probability) and Fritz Leiber.

41

A BOY AND

Still unseen in this country nearly five years after it was made, the film
version of Harlan Ellison's short story, A Boy and his Dog, turned up a short
while back in one of London's cinema clubs. We present this review by John

Fleming who was at the screening.

A man is crawling along the dirt in rags.

He is carrying a rifle. Faint screams
can be heard in the background. A voice
is talking on the soundtrack about what
happened in World War III. The voice
belongs to a dog.

This is a love story about the man
crawling along in the dirt and his shaggy,
telepathic sheepdog. The dog's name is
Blood. The man's name is Vic, but the
dog calls him Albert. A Boy and His Dog
is the brilliant 1975 film of Harlan Elli-
son's novella. So far, it has no British
distributor.

Harlan Ellison's novella won the pres-
tigeous Nebula Award. The film was
made by an obscure company, LQJaf, co-
owned by supporting actors L.Q. Jones
and AIvy Moore. Jones scripted and the
film was just about to start shooting with
a respected and experienced director.
Then, one day, he took Jones aside and
said, "I have an overpowering sense of
doom". He was taken off the picture and
Jones became director.

Across the desert comes a local cut-
throat and his gang. He's called Fellini.

He rides a machine made from bed-
springs, a toilet bowl, washer and dryer
fronts etc. He is dressed in tatters, his
face grimy, his manner brutal and sadis-
tic, stomping on his cronies' spines.

"Wonder why they hang around him,"
says Vic.

"Probably charisma," mutters Blood
telepathically.

Vic and Blood steal a sack of tinned
food from Fellini and barter their way
into a blue movie show in a ramshackle
tent town. As Vic watches the scratched
and mutilated images. Blood becomes
bored; "How can you enjoy a show with-
out popcorn?" he asks incredulously.

The dog is the star of the film. He was
taught to take directions from his human
co-star and so does not, like most movie
dogs, look off-screen for commands from
his trainer. Dog and boy are inter-
dependent. The boy finds food for the
dog; the dog smells out women for the
boy.

They find one girl, Quilla June
Holmes, hiding underground but, before

42

Vic can approach her, a pack of men
arrives. Blood mutters an aside: “Let the
seven dwarfs have Snow White and we

my fury at the common man during that
whole period of repression — of Agnew
and Mitchell and Nixon."

I re-united with Blood and the film has an
I astonishing firul twist,
j Harlan Ellison is uneasy about it: “The
I last line is really, I think, just a cheap
shot. But audiences love it and I can't
fight that."

L.Q. Jones says: 'The last line of the
picture took me three months to write. A
lot of people don't like it, but a lot of
people do. To me, that line says what the
whole picture is about and what the
philosophy of their lives is."

Because of the eccentricities of British
film distribution, you cannot see A Boy
and His Dog in this country. But, if it ever
does get shown, see it. Despite a mis-
judged underworld section, it is well-
made, extremely funny and has one of
the great final lines of all-time. When I
saw the film, there was silerx:e for two or
three seconds after the line, then
scattered guffaws and applause from the
audierKe.

A Boy and his Dog (1975)

can get out of here with all our parts."
But, instead, they beat off the attackers
in a bloody battle.

The next day, Quilla June lures Vic to
an underground world called Topeka.
Harlan Ellison admits: 'The down-under
section is much weaker than the above-
ground stuff. It's my fault because I
didn't really create a down-under section
that was realistic. I wanted to poke fun at
the middle class. It became a vehicle for

It's also clear that one basic mistake is
Vic leaves Blood, the film's central
character, above-ground during this
section of the story. In the under-world,
Vic is captured by the ruling Committee
(one of whom. Dr Moore, is played by co-
producer AIvy Moore). He escapes, but
not before he meets a smiling robot with
hands which can screw and scrunch
necks so that blood surges out of the
victims' rrrauths. Up on the surface, Vic is

Don Johnson Us Vic), Tiger {Blood), Tim
McIntyre {Blood's Voice), Susenne Benton
{Quilla June), Cherles McGrew (7?>e
Preacher), Jason Robards {Mr Lew Crad
dock), AIvy Moore {Dr Moore), Helene
Winston (Afe;), Hal Bayler {Michael), Ron
Feinberg {Fellini), Mika Rupert {Gary), Don
natter {Ken), Michael Harshman {Richard).
Written and directed by L.Q. Jones, Music
by Tim Mdntyra, Photographed by John
Arthur Morrill, Edited by Scott Conrad,
Production design Ray Boyle, Produced by
Ahty Moore.

Top left: Producer AIvy' Moore. Above left: Vk fDon Johnson^ known as Albert, is a loner. He prowls
the countryside with his dog. Blood, in search of food. Left: Vk and Blood find themsalees looking
down the business end of a double barrelled shotgun. Top: Dilemma. Vk must chose between his dog
and the strange girl he meets, Quilla JitnaTSusanne Benton/ Above: Vic is understandably suspkious
whan he stumbles across Quilla June alone and unprotected in a dereikt gymnasium.

43

Hoyo MefchondKinci

The following is just a small selection of
the fantasy material available from us.
All prices include postage — overseas
customers please note that orders will
be sent by surface mail. Please make all
cheques and postal orders payable to
MAYA MERCHANDISING and send to
us at 52 Roydene Road. Plumstead,
London SE18 1QA. Orders from outside
the United Kingdom should be paid for
by international Money Order or Bank
Draft — in sterling. All books are
softcover unless otherwise stated.

ART BOOKS
Boris

1 : Boris interview aird index plus artwork and

photos.

48 pages 0.30

2: More art. up.dated check-list. 80 pages —

24 in colour £5.15

The Brothers Hildebrandt
IrKludes interviews plus artwork and photos.
48 pages — 8 in colour 0.85

Great Balls of Rre (Harrison). The
development of sex in scierKe fiction
illustration. }OVt" x lOVi": 120 pages —
almost 50 in colour. ADULTS ONLY £4.66
The Studio. The art of Jeff Jones. Mike
Kaluta. Barry Windsor Smith and Berm
Wrightson. 12" x 12": 160 pages almost all in
colour. £7.05

21st Century Foss. SF hardware by one of
the best. 11'/i"x8'/i"; 144 pages almost all in
full colour £5.46

EschatUS. (Pennington). Visual
interpretations of the prophecies of Nosta-
damus. 12" x 12". 95 pages almost all in
colour. £5.15

Tomorrow and Beyond (Summers ed).
Masterpieces of scierKe fiction illustration by
64 of today's top artists irKluding Boris. Oi

Fate. Malta and Berkey. Over 3(X) paint-
irtgs all in colour. 12" X 9"; 160 pages. £5.75
Beauty and the Beast. (Achiiieos). Superb
sword and sorcery/fantasy paint-
ings. 11V>" X 8Vi": 96 pages almost all in
colour. £4.46

CALENDARS FOR 1980
Heroes. Sire 12'/>" x 12". A full colour
painting by Boris a month plus an additional
centrespread £4.20

Journey. 12 full colour scierKe fiction
paintings by Chris Moore — ideal posters.
Size16V>"x1iy.". £2.90

Lord of the Rings. Packed with over 50 full
colour illustrations from the movie. Size
12V." X 12'/,". 0.50

STAR TREK '

Enterprise Incidents
6: "BalarKe of Terror", ST Bloopers, fan
fiction ar>d more. 72 pages. £2.40

The Fate of the Phoenix. (Marshak &
Culbreath). Sequel to "The Price of the
Phoenix". £1.15

Fotonovels. A complete episode retold
using 300 full colour stills plus original
dialogue.

1 : City On The Edge Of Forever
2 : Where No Man Has Gone Before
3: The Trouble With Tribbles
4: A Taste Of Armageddon

. . £1.10Mch

5: Metamorphosis

6: All Our Yesterdays
7: The Galileo 7
8: A Piece Of The Action
9: Devil In The Dark
10: Day of The Dove
1 1 : The Deadley Years
12: Amok Time

£120 each

POSTERS

All posters are in full colour unless otherwise
stated and sizes irKlude borders where
applicable. Sent mailed rolled in a protective
tube.

KEN KEaV

KK1 Mutant Hunter £225

KK2 Winged Viking £225

KK3 All Hallow's Eve £2.35
KK4 The Black Warrior £2.35
KK5 Ying and Yang £2.35
KK6 Lucy £2.35

JOHNBUSCEMA

JB1 Superheroes £1.66

NEAL ADAMS

NA1 The Banler £2.35

VAUGHAN BODE

VB1 Lizard of Oz £2.35

VB2 Motorcycle Momma £2.50

CHRIS FOSS

CF3 Mutans Vs. Mutans £2.05

CF4 Mindbridge £2.05

fWB BROWN

RBI The Hobbit £1.60

BORIS VALLEJO

BV1 The Savage Primeval £2.35

BV2 The Mongol Warriors £2.35

BV3 Stella £2.35

BVS Hostage for Hinterland £2.05

BV6 Lord of the Savage Land £2.35

BV7 The Barbarian and the Sorcerers £2.35

BVS Battle of the Walking Dead £2.35

BV9 Demon in the Mirror £2.06

BV10 The Maker of Universes £2.05

BV1 1 The Broken Sword £2.06

BV12 The Lavalite World £2.05

BV13 The High Couch of Silistra £2.05

FRANK FRAZETTA

FF1 The Bear £3.00

FF2 Bran Mak Morn £3.00

FF3 Sword of Mars D.OO

FF4 Serpent £3.00

FF5 Tanar of Pellucidar £3.00

FF6 Dracula Meets the Wolfman £3.00

FF7 Green Death £3.00

FF8 Tyrannosaurus Rex £3.00

SUPERHB10ES

S4 Superman The Movie £1 .30

FRANK BRUNNER
FBI The Charger

FRANK THORNE
FT1 Red Sonja

FILM POSTERS

FP1 Orte Million Years BC/She £2.05

The Making of StarTrek

(Whitfield & Rodenberry). The history of the
series from conception to completion. Over
80 photos. £1.10

The Startess World. (Eklund). A new,
original story 95p

Trek

2: The Romulan/Klingon Alliance. Another
view of Spock, Vulcan costume design
ar>d more. 40 pages £1 .80

Trek Special

2: ST arourtd the World, Federation
fashions Spock Scrapbook plus Space
1999, The Outer Limits and more. 48
pages £2.06

VuiMn (Sky). A new story featuring Spock.

£1.00

AUEN

Alien (Foster). Adaptation of the movie.
liKludes 8 pages of colour stills. £1.30
Alien: The Illustrated Story. Full colour
adaptation of the him with artwork by Walt
Simonson. lOV," x 8"; 64 pages £225
Alien Movie Novel. The film retold using
over 1000 full colour stills plus original
dialogue. 10’/i" x SVt": 108 pages £4.66
Tile Book of Alien. (Scanlon & Gross). The
makirtg of the movie packed with interviews,
commentaries and special effects. Orer 200
sketches and photos (more than half in
colour). 11 %"x8'/i"; 112 pages. £3.00
Warren Presents: Alien. Packed with stills
and information on the movie. Includes
special effects, deleted scenes and much
more. 68 pages. £1.50

Alien Poster Mag.

1 : 16 pages folding out into giant 34" x 22"

poster of the space jockey. Full colour
throughout. 6Sp

36 " X 24 "

SOFTCOVER aNEMA BOOKS
Ali«fi Craatures. (Siegel & Suaretl. A guide
to the science fiction "nK>nsters" from films,
television and elsewhere, over 180 stills arKf
illustrations; 10^" x BY,"; 160 pages — 32 in
colour. £3.66

Rim Fantasy Scrapbook. (Harryhausenl.
The career of Ray Harryhausen from the
early days up to "The Golden Voyage Of
Sinbad”. Over 400 photos including pre-
production sketches and "behind-the-
scenes" material. 12" x 8’/4"; 146 pages plus
6 in colour. £4.66

Fantastic Television. (Gerani).Pictorial
history of TV fantasy. Includes 'The
Prisoner", "Space 1999", 'Twilight Zone",
"Captain Video", "Star Trek" and over 180
other shows. Includes details and synopses
of all episodes. Over 3S0 photos; 11" x 8%";
192 pages. £5.66

Sd-R Now (Frank). 10 years of science
fiction films and television from "2001: A
Space Odyssey" to "Star Wars". Over 100
stills (nearly half in colour); 11^" x 8Vi"; 80
pages £1.66

HARDCOVER ONEMA BOOKS
The Fabulous Fantasy Rims. (Rovin).
From the silent "Nosferatau" to "Sinbad And
The Eye Of The Tiger" — e history of the
genre. Over 3(X) photos; 1 1 V4" x 8‘A": 272
pages. £10.40

Fu^re Tensa: Tha Cinama Of Sdanca

Fiction. (Brosnan). A comprehensive history
of sf films. Over 1(X) stills; 9'/i" x 7"; 320
pages £7.86

Horror Rims. (Frank). From the very early
days up to "Carrie" and "The Omen". Over
220 photos; 13" x 9V4"; 192 pages— 20 in
colour £5.60

Movia Spadal Effacts. (Rovin). A history
and re-creation of the methods of special
effects photography. Over 150 photos; 1 1 ’A"
x8V.";176pa^ £8.85

Sdanca Fiction In Tha Movias: An A-Z
(Pickard). A reference guide to the films,
characters and people of the genre. BY," x
5(4". 144 pages plus 16 pages of stills.

£4.00

COMICS AMO RELATED ITEMS
Conan Tha Barbarian. A collection of the
award-winning issues of Marvel's sword and
sorcery comic illustrated by Barry Smith. Full
colour throughout.

1 : reprints issues 1, 2 & 3
2: issued4, 5 & 6
3: issues 7, 8 8i 9

4: issues 10& 11 £1.40 each

Dan Data; Tha Man From Nowhara:
Vohima I. Superb full colour reprints of an
adventure featuring "Eagle's" "pilot of the
future" — art by Frank Hampson. 11V'j"x8%"
106 pages. £4.95

DC Super Heroes Poster Book. 22 full
colour posters featuring CK's major heroes
arKf villains. 15(4" x 11 Vi"; 48 pages

£4.20

Marvel Novel Series. All-new full length
adventures.

1 : Amazing Spiderman:

Mayhem In Manhattan
(Wein&Wolfman) £1.15

2: litcredibla Hulk: Stalker From The Stars
(Wein, Wolfman & Silva)

3: Incredible Hulk: Cry Of Tha Beast

(Meyers) £1.30 each

The Mighty World Of Marvel Pin-up
Book. Full colour posters of 20 of Marvel's
greatest heroes arvl teams. 15(4" x 1 1 (4"; 48
pages £4.20

MAGAZINES AND FANZINES
Starlog

27: The Martian Chronicles, Black Hole,
Star Trek SPFX, The Brothers
Hildebrandt.

28: TV special — Worxfer Woman episode
guide. Buck Rogers, The Hulk,
Batllestar Galactica.

29: Meteor, Martin Bower, Buck Rogers,
Mork and Mindy

£1.10 each

Fantastic Rbns

11: Alien, Ridley Scott interview,
Quartermass

12: Moonraker, Frank Langella interview,
Ridley Scott, part II. This Island Earth

£1 00 each

Fangoria

3: The Shining, Kolchak: The Night Stalker,
Richard Matheson, David Cronenberg

£ 1.10

Why not visit our shop "The Edge Of Forever" at 54 Bellegrove Road, Welling, Kent. It stocks our full range of fantasy film material
plus science fiction, horror and fantasy novels and American comics. (Open 10.(X) am — 5.30 pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday
and Friday: 9.00 am — 5.30 pm Saturday; closed all day Wednesday). Mail order enquiries telephone Crayford, Kent (29) 53853.

F ans of the small-screen, from that
generation who rentember Jack
Webb's police actioner Dragnet ("All we
want are the facts, ma'am"), will also
recall Webb's innovative production style
— notable for its terse dialogue, rapid-fire
editing and its stoney-faced, enwtionless
featured characters.

Although Webb's Mark VII Pro-
ductions appear to be a most prolific tv
film making outfit these days, one of his
more recent offerings. Project UFO,
leaves a lot to be desired. Obviously
inspired by Steven Spielberg's 1978 box-
office grosser. Close Encounters of the
Third Kind, Mark Vll's unidentified
flying object series arrives on the home
screen as little more than the old Dragnet
format given a pseudo sf re-spray.

The whole nature of the show is strict,
formal and documentary-like. As a stern
voice narrates, the opening sequence
shows us a series of blueprints crossing
the screen: "Izikiel saw the wheel. This is
the wheel he said he saw. TheM are
unidentified flying objects that people
say they are seeing now. Are they proof
that we are being visited by civilisations

from other stars or just what are

they? The United States Air Force began
an investigation of this high strangeness in
a search for the truth. What you are
about to see is part of that 20-year
search."

Concluding in 1969, the US Air
Force's Project Blue Book investigated
UFO reports and sightings for over 22
years, and it is from these files that the
series' episodes are based.

Creator-exectuive producer Jack Webb
"liberated" files of the actual cases from
the Air Force under the Freedom of
Information Act, and accumulated over
400,000 documents (on microfilm) which
detailed some 13,(XX) sightings.

"Roughly 70 per cent of the Air
Force's cases were explained satisfactorily
as natural phenomena like balloons or
clouds," comments Webb. 'There were
hoaxes, too, like people sailing hubcaps in
the air and photographing them. But
about 12 to 15 per cent are true
unknowns."

Project UFO's general theme operates
around two deadly earnest Air Force
officers. Major Jake Gatlin (played by
William Jordan) and Sergeant Harry Fitz
(Caskey Swaim), who travel around the
country interviewing "witnesses" and

46

Opposite top : A iurprised house-
holder comes face to face with a
mechanical visitor from outer space.
Opposite centre: An example of a
Proiact UFO flying saucer. Opposite
below: The heroes of the series.
Major Jake Gatlin
and Sergeant Harry fitz.

Left: A flying saucer
lands on a deserted
stretch of ground.
Below: Another Uni-
dentified Flying Object
hovers above a remote
country house.

HIDDEN AWA Y, FOR THE MOST PART, IN AN AFTERNOON "GRA VE-
YARD SLOT" PROJECT UFO, A SCIENCE FICTION SERIES FROM
DRAGNET'S JACK WEBB, IS BEING SCREENED - APPARENTL Y
RELUCTANTL Y - BY MOST ! TV REGIONS. STARBURST PRESENTS A
CRITICAL LOOK AT THE SERIES BY TISE VAHIMAGI.

probing for "physical evidence."

The content and style of each episode
is confusingly presented. By way of an
opening teaser (the idea teing to grab the
viewer from the start), we get to actually
see a UFO, whether it be a misshapen
boomerang-like object sailing past a
commercial airliner or a luminous blob
spewing forth small green men to frighten
Kansas corn-belt farmers. That estab-
■- lished, we then join our two dauntless
military men in search of "hard" evidence
and "reliable" witnesses. Sometimes,
when the storyline offers several suth
plots, we get to see several UFO inci-
dents; all are tracked down during the
course of the following hour.

However, the problem — a glaring,
unmistakeable one — is that most of the
cases are then logically explained away,
proven to be of a natural and earthly
origin (from distorted weather balloons
to unique compositions of sun and doud
formations). To show a character in the
story witness an event at the beginning,
then have two other characters prove it to
be a common-or-garden item at the con-
dusion is just plain deceit on behalf of
the show's producers. It's not unlike an
old Hitchcock ploy wherein a character's
story show in flashback turns out to be a
lie.

It must leave the viewer wondering if
the show is actually on the side of the
UFOs, telling us that they do really exist.

Sadly, after about two or three
episodes, the viewer will be able to tell
pretty quickly what the outcome of the
investigations will yield; the likely, earth-
bound origin of the apparent UFO, which
of the witnesses are lying etc.

Another aspect of "high strangeness"
arises between the two central Air Force
characters. There is no natural camara-
derie between them, they simply and
formally address each other as "Major"
and "Sergeant." Their cold formality
toward interviewees — the latter usually
taking on the stance of witches at a
witch-hunt — stops barely short of a war-
crimes trial, but held over a coffee table.

With most of the cases proven to be
natural phenonDena or hoaxes the show
becomes almost a crash-course in frust-
ration — you want them to discover a real
flying saucer or shake hands with little
green men, or something!

But, no. What little they do give
credence to merely results in a neutral

report. The whole of West Virginia could
be littered with flying saucer debris and
screaming little green men but Project
Blue Book wouldn't recognise it as
"physical evidence." Typical exchange at
the close of an episode would be: "And
what would the Air Force file this one
under. Major?" Casting a knowing glance
at the questioner, "Unknown".

The show's special effects are two-
pronged: the bad ones appear (via sub-
jective camera) as intricately designed
boxes, sometimes pulsating with coloured
lights, that move slowly into extrenrte
dose-up; the good effects come along
when a landing or hovering UFO is seen
in composition (and size-reference) with
the surrounding countryside. Some of the
latter effects can be quite interesting
when the UFO is seen moving through
trees or cruising just above a highway.

Project UFO's production, in most
departments, is handled efficiently,
induding some good-to-expert location
photography. Although regular scripters,
Harold Jack Bloom, Donald L. Gold and
Robert Blees, sometinf>es tend to get too
bogged down with technical facts and
jargon, Blees' The Nevada Desert Incident
teleplay remains a topnotch job, carefully
constructed and dramatically effective.
The show's producer, William Coleman, is
a retired Air Force colonel who actually
ran Project Blue Book during the early
'60s. Excepting Richard Quine's direction
on the premiere segment (The Washing-
ton D.C. Incident), the rest of the
episodes are merged with routine
interest by Robert Leeds, Sig Neufeld and
Dennis Donnelly. Music by Nelson Riddle
underlines most accurately the theme of
events — impending disaster#

47

HOOK WORLD

THE OFFICIAL ALIEN POSTER MAGAZINE

One of the better aspects of the current boom
in science fiction films is the attention that it is
attracting from other sectors of the ntedia. It is
now almost certain that every (successful) film
will encourage someone to produce some kind
of "souvenir" of the film.

Fans of Alien are especially lucky in that,
apart from the traditional tie-in novel (two of
them if you count the earlier edition without
stills as a separate "collectable") the film has
given birth to The Book of Alien, Alieti: The
Illustrated Story and The Alien Movie Novel (a
kind of up-rrtarket fotonovel). There are also
more peripheral items such as model kits,
tee-shirts and caps but, back where we are, now
comes ... an Alien poster mag.

Of all the spin-off publications the poster
mag is the one with the most sales potential but
it is not often that it is fully realised. Many
people are not willing to pay much more than
£1 for their books so the market for The Book
of Alien (£2.50), Alien: The Illustrated Story
(£2.50) and The Alien Movie Novel (£3.95) is
more limited than that of the novelisation and
other cheaper items such as the poster mag.
However, even though people are more willing
to part with money for the cheaper items they
still expect value for money and a poster mag is
very vulnerable to attack for lack of value.

This is not entirely the publishers' fault as
there is only a certain amount that can be
achieved within the limitations of the format
All poster mags suffer because, out of the six-
teen pages available, one is for the cover and
four or eight for the poster leaves only seven
or eleven pages to achieve any sort of editorial
"fatness".

The scene that was finally used in The
Official Alien Poster Mag is of the space jockey
with the space-suited Lambert in the fore-
ground. Fine, it's nice enough but does any-

body want to put a two-tone (grey-white)
poster on their wall?

Potter mags are a great idea but only if the
film under "examination" has some scenes that
will work as posters. Publishers shouldn't pro-
duce a poster mag just because they have the
rights to a successful film - more thought is
needed!

A final thought, does Alien heve any scenes
that would make good posters?

Published by Felden Productions. 16 pages.
45p.

ALIEN MOVIE NOVEL edited by
Richard J. Anobila

Back in the mists of time (Sterburst 4 to be
accurate) I reviewed the dose Encounters of
the Third Kind Fotonovel. At that time I said -
and still say - that the small paperback style
detracts from the overall impact of the format.
This book changes all that.

The larger size of the Alien Movie Novel
together with the use of over three times as
many stills as the average fotonovel has enabled
the editor to make the story flow more
smoothly. Not only that, the additional space
makes it easier for changes in the layout to give
impact to those points in the tale that need it.
One particular part of the plot where this helps
to create additional atmosphere is in the
infamous "chest-burster" scene.

The basic format of the book is 3 or 4 stills
to a page banked to read down the page with
occasional smaller photos aiding with scene-
ntting. As the story unwinds towards the
inevitable demise of Kane the pace begins to
quicken and Mr Anobile implies this by
increasing the number of photos per page.

Although the success of this type of book is
relatively new, the format itself isn't and
Richard Anobile has had previous experience
with it. One of his earlier ventures into this
field was with a series titled The Film Qassics
Library. Included in the series were (James
Whale's) Frankenstein and Psycho and, even
though the books were well-received they were
not a commercial success - possibly bKause
their black and white reproduction was not as
visually attractive as the current package. (I
appreciate that the films mentioned were not in
colour but the point itself remains validj
Recently Mr Anobile's work in this area has
included the Mork and Mindy Video Novel and
the Battlestar Galactka Photostory.

Another breakthrough has come with this
book - this is the use of the frames the ana-
morphic print to achieve the blow-ups for re-
production. Up until now, the frames have been
from the 35mm print and the new nwthod does
seem to produce an increase in the quality of
reproduction although this could, of course, be
attributed solely to the larger size - 1 doubt it.

’’ublished by Future Books; 208 pages;
10%x8ii‘';a.95.

BRIAN DALEY

HAN SOLO AT
STARS'END

rmom the aovcntuucs of umt sk vwAuttii
•AWOON THE CHAM ACTEM AMO NTUATlONSCflEA noav
OEOMOE LUCAS

/

HAN SOLO AT STARS' ENO by Brian Oaley.
Writing a novel that has a large, guaranteed sales
potential must be the dream of every aspiring
writer but, like making a pact with the devil,
there's a price to be paid for gaining such a
prize.

In the case of Han Solo at Stan' End the
price that Brian Daley paid was not his soul
but rather his creativity.

The major fault with this book is that, as
the plot progresses, it beconws clearer ^at
nothing is going to happen to either Han or
Chewbacca nor is there going to be any major
event that could possibly affect the universe
being created in front of the cameras. As I write
this review the word "sterile" comes to mind
and that is exactly what this book is - sterile
and pre-packaged.

It's pre-packaged in that the more one reads
the more certain becomes the feeling that Mr
Daley was told to write a Star Wars tale that
didn't go anywhere! That he has managed to do
so in an entertaining manner is beside the point
because, in the final analysis, the story is point-
less. There are a number of indicators to the
book being crafted to satisfy the countless cries
for more stories without disturbing The Empire
Stirkes Back and future additions to the Star
Wan canon. They include isolating Han and
Chewbacca from the mainstream of the Star
Wan universe whilst ensuring their surroundings
are not too alien by introducing two 'droids
with an astonishing resemblance - in their
speech and actions - to R2D2 and C3P0 and
by creating yet another all-powerful and male-
volent organisation for our heroes to pit them-
selves against. That the new entity is called the
(Corporate Sector) Authority is meaningless —
it still reads like the Empire to me!

Published by Sphere Books Ltd. 208 pages.
95p.

48

ST6

ST7

STa

ST9

STIC

STll

ST12

ST13

ST14

ST 15.

ST16

ST17

ST18

ST19

ST20

ST21

ST22

ST23

ST24

CAPTAIN KIRK

MR . SPOCK

DR. "BONES" McCOY

SCOTTY 8., CHEKGV

SULU e. WILLARD DECKER

UHURA CHRISTINE CHAPEL

ILIA ?. JANICE RAND

ENTERPRISE CREW

SECURITY GUARDS

VULCANS

KLINGONS
AAAMAZZARJTES
KAZARITE3
BETALGEUSIANS
ARCTURIANS
ZARANITES
K' NORM IANS
RIGELLIANS
RHAANDRITES
SHAM IN PRIESTS
MEGARITES
S ADRIANS
ANDOREANS

2T.rrini Miniatures.

Each pack costs 5>Op and
contains two different figures.

Star Trek the Motion Picture figures
are manufactured under licence
from Paramount Pictures Corporation.

(c) Paramount Pictures Corporation.

k-* .Ik-

. ■I

CITAPEL MIiSlATllKES ITU!

Newark Folk Museum, 48 Millgate, Newark, Nottinghamshire

Tel: 0636 77495

MAIL ORDER CHARGES: UK: Please add 10% p&p (Minimum 10p: Pott Free over E10I OVERSEAS: Please add 33% pftp
S S.A.E for full lists including Asgsrd Ministurss. S.S.A.E ^ 25p in stamps for sample fi 9 ure and full lists.

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THE FANTASTIC WORLDS OF

GECMIGEnU.

Since the earliest years of the 1950s, producer/director George Pal, who had made his name in Holly-
wood with his very successful series of animated "Puppetoons", has represented the pioneering spirit
of the modern science fiction film. Tise Vahimagi looks at Pal's career
which has spanned nearly thirty years.

G eorge Pal, producer-director-
writer-puppeteer, is a nanrw that
has spanned three decades of
fantasy filnrvmaking. To one generation
of science-fantasy buffs his name means
The War of the Worlds, to another it
means Doc Savage — but who is the man
behind the name?

George Pal was born on February 1,
1908, in Cegled, a small town near
Budapest, Hungary. His family having
strong theatrical connections, a sense of
wonder and showmanship was already in
young George's blood. Although he
attended the Budapest Academy of Arts,
and acquired some knowledge of
anatomy along the vvay, he didn't enter
the film industry until later when he got a
job designing the title cards for silent
films.

It was during this time, illustrating
subtitles for Hunnia Films, that he
married Zsoka Grandjean, his childhood
sweetheart. With his responsibilities now
doubled. Pal decided to move to Berlin
and, hopefully, more money. He even-

tually got work at Germany's largest film,
studio, UFA, and was soon promoted to
head of the cartoon department.
Anwrican cartoons, coming out of Holly-
wood, were a great influence on Pal and
he began experimenting with his own;
one year later, in 1932, he left UFA and
started up his own studio. This was to
lead to the creation of his famous
Puppetoons.

However, with the increase of Nazi
power in Germany Pal a nd his wife

Pal produced 41 Puppetoons
between 1941 and 1947.

moved on again, travelling around various
cities in Europe until they settled in
Holland. Here he opened another studio
and began producing commercials for
Philips Radio, Horlicks Milk and Unilever,
as well as the large American advertising
concern G. Walter Thompson. Following
many unsuccessful attempts for an
American visa Mr and Mrs Pal were finally
granted entry and moved to New York in
1940.

On arrival in America he was con-
tacted by Paramount, who were
impressed with his puppet films, and
asked him to produce a series of these
shorts for the studio. A delighted George
Pal immediately went into production,
assisted eventually by a staff of forty-five,
and produced 41 Puppetoons for Para-
mount between 1941 and 1947, six of
which were nominated for Academy
Awards. In 1943 he received an Academy
Award for pioneering new techniques in
producing animated pictures. 1947 saw
the close of the Puppetoon studio and the
last of the puppet films, except for a
short sequence seen in Paramount's
all-star Variety Girl in 1947.

After producing several educational
shorts for the Shell Oil Company, Pal
became determined to produce feature
films. At this time he had three projects
prepared, ready for financing: tom
thumb. Operation Moon and Rupert.
None of the studios were interested in
tom thumb or Operation Moon, but Pal
managed to get his Rupert project fin-

50

Far Itft: The horrific effects of • punc-
tured tpece suit from Conqimt of Spaea
(1955). Centra left: Lee Vasque, heed of
the Paramount prop shop, works on one
of the war machine miniatures from War
of the Workfa (1953). Left: A scene
from War of tha WorMt. Notice the ¥riras
suspendirtg the machines. Above: A
tense moment from Conquest of Space.
^ Selovv' Chariton Heston has ants in his
pants in The Naked Juitgla (1953).

anced and, in 1949, Eagle-Lion Filnrts
released The Great Rupert. Produced by
Pal and directed by Irving Pichel, The
Great Rupert was a musical comedy
revolving around a charming little
squirrel; although most people believed it
to be a real squirrel (trained to perform)
it was in fact an animated model. Unfor-
tunately, The Great Rupert was no box-
office smash but it was warmly received
by the critics, and George Pal was on his
way to feature film production.

PIONEERING
SCIENCE FICTION

1950 to 1953 would be good years for
George Pal — for they were the great
science fiction years. First off was Oper-
ation Moon, the other half of The Great
Rupert two picture deal. Science fiction
author Robert Heinlein and screen-scribe
"Rip" Von Ronkel co-wrote a script
(based on Heinlein's novel Roc)(etship
GaHUeo) which was called Journey to the
Moon. This, with Pal's contribution.

became Operation Moon and was even-
tually released, in August, 1950, as
Destiitation Moon.

Though appearing unsophisticated by
today's standards, the film's story, about
a flight to the moon, was received by
audiences of the day as breath-taking
adventure, especially as it was filmed in
Technicolor. Under the direction of
Irving Pichel again. Destination Moon was
a simple journey-to-the-moon-and-back
fantasy, though presented in semi -docu-
mentary fashion. Despite the cast of
unknowns, the behind-the-scenes crew
consisted of some of the most accom-
plished in their field: cinematographer
Lionel Lindon, production desigr>er Ernst
Fegte, special effects technician Lee
Zavitz, and Chesley Bonestell as technical
adviser and astronomical artist. Pal came
up with a clever idea to familiarise
audiences with the workirigs of a rocket-
ship; he hired Woody Wooc^eclcer creator
Walter Lantz to make a short cartoon
which explained the basic technology in
an elementary fashion. Pal and Lantz

were close friends and Pal occasionally
offers a tribute to his old buddy in his
features, such as The Time Machine, The
Power and Doc Savage, through the
appearance of a Woody Woodpecker doll
or toy'.

Sadly, today, there is little to excite or
enthrall viewers of Destination Moon —
particularly since Neil Armstrong's little
dance routine in July, 1969. However,
When Worlds Collide took George Pal in a
whole new direction. The project had
been gathering dust since 1934 when

When Worlds Collide was to be a
Cecil B. DeMille film.

Paramount had promoted it as an
upcoming Cecil B. DeMille production.
Pal acquired the rights to film the story
and, in 1951, audiences were treated to a
spectacular tidal wave hitting New York
City and the collision between Earth and
a large, runaway planet, Bellus.

Filmed in lush Technicolor with some
excellent process photography by Faricot
Edouart, When Worlds Collide ^ilds up

51

V

4i

Right; Tha Space Ark
stands on the runway
before its epic voyage to
the planet Zyra in the film
When Wofidt Collid*
(1951). Below left: The
space ship from
Destination Moon (1950).

and up to an all-too-disappointing dimax.
Everyone knows of and expects the des-
truction of the planets in the final scenes,
but when it comes it's over too quickly to
be of any real impact (if you'll pardon
the use of the word).

Nevertheless, the sequertce showing a
tremendous tidal wave ripping its way
through New York is devastating and
exciting; quite justly the film won the
Academy Award for special effects. How-
ever, Pal's most famous special effects
bonanza came two years later, in the
shape of The War of the Worlds.

Following When Worlds Collide Pal
considered a possible sequel, which would
also be based on a Philip Wylie-Edwin
Balmer novel {After Wortds Collide). Pal
got Paramount to pick up the rights of
the novel but studio interest later faded
and the project went into the vaults.
Another idea that Pal became intrigued
with at the time was the filming of Jules
Verne's 20JOOO Leagues Under the Sea.

War of the Worlds was planned as
a 3D nrtovie,

This, too, hit the skids, until of course
Disney filmed it.

As with When Worlds Collide, Para-
mount had originally secured the rights to
H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds for
Cecil B. OeMille (this one back in 1925).
Needless to say, OeMille passed over this
potential fantasy epic in favour of
pursuing his colossal, historical romances.
Obviously, for big Cecil, Volga boatnwn
and Cleopatra's milk baths were far more
important than the clashing of planets or
invading Martians!

However, Pal revived the War of the
Worlds project and created one of sf
moviedom's greatest visual spectaculars.
It was also the first of four colourful Pal
films to be directed by Byron Haskin.
Much has been said of Pal's War of the
Worlds (maybe too much by now for it
not to be viewed as simply a gallery of
special effects) but an interesting
side-note is that when production initially
began Pal was considering filming the last
part in the then-popular 3-D process. Too
bad nothing ever came of it. Nevertheless,
with War of the Worlds, Pal "took special
effects from mere star status and made
them into a super star", and copped the
1953 Academy Award for them.

CONQUESTOFSFIICE ~
AND BEYOND

The years between 1953 and 1960 were
pretty bare of the visual wonders and
overall thrills that the audiences had
come to associate with producer George
Pal.

Houdini, a starring vehicle for the
fresh-faced Tony Curtis, is obviously not
in the George Pal realm of adventure film-
making. It comes across as too much of a
personal project (Pal is a big fan of stage
magicians and magic acts; he was made a
member of the exclusive Magic Circle
some years later). A somewhat Holly-
woodized version of the Harry Houdini
biography, some of the performarKes
involving complex escapology are quite
interesting — particularly the final
"Torture Cell" trick sequence which kills
off the Tony Curtis character.

Next came what is probably Pal's best
film of this period — The Naked Jungle.
Based on a short story by Carl Stephen-
son called Leiningen Vs. The Ants,
directed by Haskin, and with effects
handled by veteran John P. Folton, The
Naked Jungle is a highly drarrutic adven-
ture film when it isn't bogged down in
the quagmire of contrived romance
between Charlton Heston and Eleanor
Parker. Paramount advertising hailed the
film as "The Picture About the Mara-
buntaf" The "Marabunta" are an army of
soldier ants some two miles wide and
twenty miles long who are munching and
marching their way through South
America towards Heston's plantation.
The climactic battle with the horde of
ants is clearly the major part of the film,
and remains in the memory long after the
film is over.

George Pal's 1955 space fantasy. The

Below right: The first
human beings to set foot
on the moont Destination
Moon was loosely based on
Heinlein's Rocket Ship
Galileo.

Conquest of Space, is regarded by many
as one of his best sf efforts. A review of
the film today would make one wonder
why. From a story-telling point of view
the film is sirrtply dull: a flight to Mars,
launched from an orbiting space wheel, is
nearly destroyed by a religious fanatic
but all is well at the final fade-out.
Followers of director Byron Haskin may
care to offer thematic parallels with his
other films (the heavy-handed religious
ntotif, for example), but is that really
important in a science-fantasy film? With
Conquest of Space it is, however, possible
to ignore the elementary storyline and
concentrate instead on the wonderful
colour visuals created by John P. Fulton,
Irmin Roberts, Paul Lerpae, IvyI Burks
and Jan Oomela; the technical assistarKe
offered by Werner von Braun; the beauti-
ful space art designed by Chesley Bone-
stell. It is the visual effects that are the
important and entertaining factors in
Conquest of Space. Had the film been
made the way Pal originally conceived it,
a space trilogy of epic proportions called
Trio of Space, the film as a whole may
have become something more substantial.

Although Paramount was losing
interest, and faith, in science fiction films
they did try to promote a Conquest of
Space tv series some three years later.

Pal's old tom thumb idea blossomed in
1957 when MGM took an interest in his
project; at first the film was set for song-
and-dance man Donald 0'Ck>nnor to play
the title character but when Metro fully
came into the picture they insisted on
Russ Tamblyn for the role. Pal conceded
and then brought the production to
Metro's studios in England, where most
of tom thumb was shot. For many of the
fantastic visuals the effects ranged from
massive to miniature; gigantic sets were
constructed for some of Tamblyn's dance
routir>es, while animated special effects
were created by the rrewly formed Project
Unlimited team of Wah Chang, Gene
Warren and Tim Bar (Wah Chang's model
work for the "Yawning Man" sequence is
nothing short of superb). The film tom
thumb became a success for MGM (it won
the Academy Award for effects) and the
studio contracted Pal for further pro-
ductions. This led to The Time Machine
and a whole new creative boost tor
George Pal.

53

THE RENAISSANCE
OF FANTASY

The Time Machine (the H.G. Wells
version) is a somewhat vague story
narrated by a largely mysterious traveller
known only as George, and ends on a
note as cheerful as the Titanic arrival-
lounge. Pal, with writer David Duncan,
reshuffled a few elements and resulted
with a truly splendid example of effects-
and-action film making. The Project
Unlimited crew were involved in the
photograpic effects department again,
and brought in another special effects
Oscar.

Rod Taylor plays the time traveller
who journeys from the turn of the cen-
tury — with stops in 1917, 1940 and

The Time Machine won Pal's fifth
Academy Award.

1966 — to the year 802,701. Here he gets
himself involved with a childlike race
called the Eloi and a cannibalistic horde,
the Morlocks. The latter part of the film
has its share of exciting moments but the
actual time travel sequences conte across
as the most pleasing and imaginative.

The Time Machine brought in the fifth
special effects Academy Award for a
George Pal production.

Atlantis, The Lost Continent, pro-
duced in 1960 (released in '61), is a sad
affair for George Pal. One can easily see
what Pal was aiming at in this cross-
pollination of Greek mythology, destruc-
tion of Pompeii, Jules Verne, and Wells'
Island of Dr Moreau. Set in ancient
Greece, the story tells of a young Greek
fisherman who helps a mysterious girl
search for the continent of Atlantis.

Above: Sir Cedrick Hardwicks (right)
records the narration for War of the
Worlds K George Pal supervises. Right:
A meai break for the workers building
the Space Ark in When Worlds Collide
(1951). Opposite: a selection of scenes
from Pai's last film to date, Ooc Savage

(1975).

Sailing boldly where no man has sailed
before, the two are picked up by an
Atlantean submarine and taken to the
'lost continent." From here on in the
plot involves the ,usual court intrigue
alongside a surgery for turning men into
animals, the construction of a death-ray,
the build-up to taking over the world, and
the eventual destruction of Atlantis.

The idea had been with Pal since his
days with Paramount but the studio
executives at the time weren't interested
in the Atlantis project. Now with MGM,
and the success of The Time Machine, Pal
unearthed the idea once nrare and finally
managed to get the machinery rolling.
While still working on the script, with
Daniel Mainwaring, Pal was pressured by
Metro to begin production; the studio
was desperate at the time, due to a
writer's strike, to have something in pro-
duction. The result was a sorry mish-mash
of underdeveloped scenes and, in some
cases, stock footage (from Quo Vadis).
Some scenes, involving bat-winged flying
men, were even cut from the final print.

George Pal's followirtg production.
The Wonderful World of the Brothers
Grimm, came in at a time when the three-
camera, superwide-screen process of
Cinerama was in style. A joint production
between MGM and Cinerama, Brothers
Grimm harked back to the fairy tale
world of the Puppetoons, but on a more
spectacular level. The story of Jacob and
Wilhelm Grimm, writers of children's
fairy tales, the film is an episodic adven-
ture sharing the writers' biography with
their actual stories; Henry Levin directed
the biographical scenes and Pal himself
directed the fairy stories. While Brothers
Grimm contains some marvellous special
effects (particularly Jim Danforth's

jewelled dragon sequence) the overall
production remains a disappointing
exercise.

Despite his two "average" films since
Time Machine, Pal's creative adrenalin
was coursing through again when he went
to work on The Circus of Dr Lao (from
Charles G. Finney's 1935 novel). This
time screenwriter Charles Beaumont
fashioned a perfect George Pal fantasy
script from Finney's stdfy, corKerning a
strange circus run by an old Chinese man
which turns up one day in a small
Arizona town. The film, retitled 7 Faces
of Dr Lao, hit the screens in April, 1964.
Peter Sellers was Pal's first choice for the
part of Dr Lao but it was American actor
Tony Randall who finally got the part;
Randall, who turned in a magnificent
performance in all six roles (Pal's son.

The Power was a science fiction
mystery story.

Peter, played the Abominable Snowman),
had for many years played second-banana
to the leading man in sophisticated
comedies.

The film contains a sequence where
two men are terrorised by the Loch Ness
monster, which grows to gigantic propor-
tions and then shrinks back down the size
of a fish. This impressive sequence was
animated by Jim Danforth and took over
three mon^s to complete, Danforth was
nominated for a visual effects Academy
Award but was beaten at the post by
Disney's Mary Poppins.

Back with Byron Haskin in the direc-
tor's chair. Pal's next venture was a
science fiction mystery (with elentents
more fitting to an Alfred Hitchcock form
of drama) based on a novel by Frank M.
Robinson, The Power. It is a complex

54

I though thoroughly engrossing mystery
I about a killer with superhuman mental
' abilities. Shot in Panavision and Metro-
I colour by Ellsworth Fredericks, The
Power is an unnerving drama which
moves briskly from frightening reality to
terrifying illusion. At best the film draws
a superb borderline somewhere between
fantasy (you see it happening but . . .)
and reality (it is happening but . . .); at
the worst it is a tragically underrated
film.

In the mid-Sixties, Pal had become
interested in developing Logan's Run for
the screen, and at one time even had
James Bond scripter Richard Maibaum
working on the screenplay. Logan's Run
went into production in 1975 but, sadly,
George Pal was not involved. Instead, he
bought the film rights to all 181 Doc
Savage stories (originally published in
pulp magazine form during the years
1933 to 1949) and developed a screen-
play for Warner Bros.

The first script, called Doc Savage,
Archenemy of Evil, was put aside because
the character lacked a background. The
second script, penned with Joseph
Morhaim, fully introduced the Doc
Savage character, his background and his
associates, and was filmed as Doc Savage,
The Man of Bronze. The film, unfor-
tunately, failed to click at the box-office
but Pal has promised a sequel, hopefully
restructured to suit contemporary
audience tastes.

A Technicolor journey to the moon; a
grand collision of planets; the world
ravaged by an invasion from Mars; a fero-
cious battle between man and soldier
ants; men exploring the far reaches of
outer space; an incredible voyage from
history to the future; a visit to a legen-
dary lost continent; a visit to the most
bizarre circus ever imagined; the incre-
dible search for a terrifying power har-
nessed in one man's mind; the worldwide
exploits of a supreme adventurer — these
are the fantastic worlds of George Pal.
And two generations of science-fantasy
fandom are all the better for them. •

55

t*s five miles wide.,
it’s coming at
30

and there's no place
on Earth to hide!

A SANDY HOWARD/ GABRIEL KATZKA SIR RUN RUN SHAW Presentation

SEAN CONNERY
NATALIE WOOD
KARL MALDEN • BRIAN KEITH
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s..n^MARTIN LANDAU 'TREVOR HOWARD»s..cu....i» RICHARD DYSART- HENRY FONDA., e»»..p,.«.c»SANDY HOWARD
GABRIEL KATZKA e..c..«.c.«k-..-..JERE HENSHAW««c LAURENCE ROSENTHAL STAN LEY MANN..EDMUND H.NORTI

siM, I, EDMUND H. NORTH phakhitARNOLD ORGOLINlMiTHEODORE PARVIN onctiih RONALD NEAME fm ■ CMi Pml, I, MniMI

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